Cloud technology is revolutionizing legal practices by enhancing accessibility, collaboration, and data security, while also offering cost efficiency. Legal professionals can access and share documents from anywhere, ensuring robust data protection and reducing IT costs through scalable cloud resources. Additionally, cloud solutions provide disaster recovery, streamline operations, and enable advanced tools like AI for legal research and predictive analytics. Embracing cloud technology helps legal firms improve efficiency, better serve clients, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving industry.
While migrating to the cloud promises these new capabilities, many IT leaders often imagine their cloud estate will allow them to do far more with less. But all too often, the hoped-for cost savings evaporate like a mirage in the desert as real-world cloud adoption proceeds. Instead of unprecedented efficiencies, legal practices experience a lack of transparency and visibility that—along with decentralized decision-making—leads to costs spiraling out of control.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With forethought, planning, and (yes) a bit of discipline, it’s possible to implement robust financial governance in the cloud. This will allow you to reduce your spending while optimizing the value you gain from your investments in cloud services and infrastructure.
Successful cloud cost management is a long game. Pre-migration planning is essential so that resource consumption is right-sized from day one, but it’s just as important to monitor and maintain your cost control strategy over time. Public cloud vendors’ service offerings are constantly changing, so you’ll want to ensure that you’re making informed decisions about how to get the most value for your investments.
We think of cloud cost optimization as a three-part process, beginning with migration planning, extending through the migration process, and continuing into a long-term management phase. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these phases.
Effective financial management in the cloud begins before migrating your first workload. Careful planning—focusing on what to migrate, where to place it, and when to make changes—enhances the likelihood of achieving your expected return on investment (ROI).
Central to this planning phase is a thorough assessment of your current legal IT infrastructure. This assessment helps gather metrics on current spending, evaluate readiness for cloud operations, and ensure compliance with legal regulations and data protection standards. With this data, you can outline the objectives you aim to achieve with the migration and establish a cost baseline for future expense tracking.
Be prepared to make tough decisions. As you convert the migration business case into a budget plan, you’ll encounter apps and resources that may not deliver significant value. Some should be moved to the cloud, some should remain on-premises, and others should be retired. This is also a great time to evaluate your vendors’ cloud solutions for traditional on-premises solutions, such as secure document sharing with your clients.
Large-scale cloud migration is a complex, multi-phase project that requires flexibility, especially in legal workflows and document management. Forecasting costs early and often—and reporting on your spending as you go along—can help you adhere to the plans created during the assessment phase. However, don’t hesitate to adjust your approach if it improves your ROI.
Ensure that the licenses and services you select are right-sized. Too few can lead to sub-optimal performance, while too many result in wasteful spending on idle resources. Keeping individual teams and business units informed about their cloud solution costs fosters accountability and helps identify and eliminate unnecessary expenses.
Cloud solutions can significantly enhance collaboration among legal teams. By placing data and services in the appropriate tier, you can balance cost control and performance needs. As an example, many law firms have requirements to maintain client matters for many years (if they’re ever allowed to delete them!) There are very few situations where documents from that long, even decades ago, need to be reviewed, so feel free to store that data on slower, cheaper storage.
Remember, cloud and on-premises environments differ significantly. A large on-premises footprint doesn’t necessarily translate to the cloud. Re-architecting applications can often reduce costs effectively while improving collaboration and flexibility in legal workflows.
Completing your migration doesn’t mean your cost management efforts can stop. Ongoing monitoring of your solutions for cost increases is imperative to ensure that the right balance is struck between performance and cost long-term. These monitoring efforts should also be coupled with regular review of the environment to find additional efficiencies: Do your cloud vendors offer longer-term commitments? Are there other solutions they offer that you can integrate into your environment to save on both licensing and operational costs?
Cloud cost analytics solutions play a vital role in optimizing legal operations and costs. These tools provide tailored recommendations for reservations, pre-planning, right-sizing, and eliminating idle resources. Without the situational awareness that cloud cost monitoring offers, there’s always a risk of unexpected bills that could alarm your CFO.
Effective cloud cost optimization not only saves money but also helps track progress toward broader objectives. Assess the value gained from your cloud investments in terms of improved client and employee experiences, increased revenues, or accelerated growth. A well-executed cloud cost management strategy provides the insights needed for smarter decision-making, ensuring your legal practice remains compliant, secure, and efficient.
Want to learn more about how Netrix’s team of experts can help harness the power of technology to contain costs and drive revenues? Get in touch with us today.
Tom has over a decade of IT consulting experience, starting in help desk before moving into specializations like collaboration, private cloud, and Azure. He excels in working to understand clients’ cloud migration goals and develops holistic plans that encompass an end-to-end cloud journey. Tom has expert level knolwedge of topics such as endpoint management and security, application modernization, hybrid cloud implementation, and tranditional IaaS migrations to Azure.
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