This first- of-its-kind guide for the legal profession shows you how to use standard technology you already have and theCan You Trust Your Data to the Cloud?
Dennis and I use Google Docs frequently to collaborate on articles and other types of documents. We advocate the use of these cloud computing tools as great ways to work with others. But lawyers are concerned (and rightly so) about the security of handing over their data to someone else's computer. Last month a number of Google users lost access to their Google Docs for about an hour one day, and just this past week a Google Apps subscriber was completely locked out of his Google account -- no Gmail, no Google Docs, no pictures, etc. His account was ultimately restored, but not before panic, fear, and no doubt a queasy stomach set in.
What's a collaboration-minded person to do? Strong service-level agreements (SLAs) may be one answer -- Google promises a 99.9% uptime level to its paying customers, but there are no SLAs for Google Calendar or Google Docs. In Can You Trust Your Business to Google's Cloud?, Stephen Shankland reports that in addition to SLAs, many companies are offering more communications tools to their users, to help them feel more in control of the situation -- for example, some companies provide service "dashboards" where users can view the company's uptime, when problems occur, and what causes the problems. Check out the rest of the article for more information.
