The Microsoft Cloud is a broad term for the infrastructure that Microsoft have spent a great deal of time, energy, and resources into developing, in order to host all of their modern business products – from Microsoft Azure to Microsoft Word, every single individual product (and their suites and services) are hosted on the Microsoft Cloud. We spoke to an IT support company London businesses have been using to access Microsoft products for years now. The company, TechQuarters, is a Microsoft Partner, and they have worked with businesses from any different sectors over the years.
As an example of how the Microsoft Cloud can be used to support businesses in specific sectors, they discussed the Legal sector. This is a sector which has some very unique needs, to the sensitivity of the data that they handle. TechQuarters gave some examples of the various cloud-based products and services Microsoft offer, and how they help law firms with their unique needs. They are a trusted professional outsourced IT Support London provider who help companies to utilise their Microsoft Cloud in the best ways.
Microsoft Azure
Azure is really where a lot of the benefits lie, because businesses use it to modernize and future-proof their IT infrastructure. Azure is a public cloud service which can be used to host all of the data and workloads that a business needs to run on a daily and ongoing basis – this means that they can eliminate the need for on-premise hardware like servers and intranet networks. When we spoke to TechQuarters, they stated that the IT support law firms need should be highly efficient, highly proactive, and it should optimize business uptime. Migrating to the cloud makes it much easier for any IT department, or IT company, to deliver efficient support to the client.
Below are two examples of how businesses to migrate to the cloud with Azure:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
This Azure service gives businesses access to the underlying infrastructure they need to host all of their data and workloads in the cloud. With IaaS, businesses get the highest degree of control of the resources they are using – but Microsoft is in charge of managing the core infrastructure.
Platform as a Service
With this type of service, businesses purely manage the resources they host in Azure. Rather than configuring the servers and VMs themselves, the business lets Microsoft take care of all of that, and they simply host their data and workloads on the platform. As a result, they get slightly less control over the configuration of their infrastructure; but the attraction of this is that it is easier to manage.
Microsoft 365
Most businesses will be familiar with Microsoft 365 – if not by name, then definitely by the products and services included in it; Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are all part of Microsoft 365, as well as OneNote, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Windows 10 & 11, etc. M365 is billed as a business-in-a-box solution, providing organisations with all the tools they need to function on a daily basis, and to get their staff working.
Below are some of the ways in which Microsoft 365 can specifically help law firms.
OneDrive & SharePoint
One of the most frequently cited needs of law firms, according to TechQuarters, is robust yet flexible file management solutions. Law firms want their staff to be able to access, share, and collaborate on documents no matter where they happen to be (this is something that has become increasingly sought after since the onset of COVID-19, too). According to TechQuarters, OneDrive is ideal for individual file management, and SharePoint is great at providing flexible file management for teams and departments. Both products benefit from the protection of Enterprise Mobility + Security, which is also included in the Microsoft 365 suite of products.
Integration with Legal Software
Of course, Microsoft 365 does not provide all of the tools and services that a law firm will need. There are various products that are specifically designed to assist law firms with things like case management, or discovery – products like ZyLab ONE, or Clio, for example. But the good news is that Microsoft 365 integrates with many of the products that law firms use. This is beneficial because Microsoft 365 helps a business consolidate their workloads and processes within a digital ecosystem, and so the ability to integrate third-party apps into that ecosystem makes things a lot easier.
