All of us who work in the legal industry were forced into a work from home model in early-2020, virtually overnight, and suddenly found ourselves replacing in-person meetings with Zoom. It was a paradigm shift that had been quietly underway for years but accelerated with breathtaking speed.
The emerging law firm strategy of moving to a managed IT services model — in which an expert services provider assumes responsibility for the firm’s IT systems and operations — is gaining traction as we head into 2019. This model enables law firms to turn over their day-to-day IT infrastructure support requirements to an outside company that is able to deliver these services at a lower cost and with greater efficiency. As a result, the firms can reassign their full-time IT staff members toward higher value functions that propel the business, rather than worrying about who is making sure the systems are running and the data is secure.
The data center industry has been undergoing a major transformation over the recent years with new providers offering broader portfolios of robust co-location facilities with mature cloud services at competitive price points. Even in the midst of the industry’s shift, firms continue to recognize data centers as integral components of their overall IT environments.