I'm supporting a very small law firm. Currently the firm has two attorneys, one paralegal, and one front desk person. They also have an aging 2003 Server box in the basement acting as domain controller, Exchange server, file server, and kind of a print server (though not well). I've wanted to get this server upgraded since I started working for them, but they're pretty tight with the cash.

My question for you guys: are we officially past the point where it makes any sense whatsoever to keep a server like this on site? I don't really see any advantage to having this thing sitting in the basement. They could do so much more with cloud services and it would probably make more financial sense too. They already pay me more money to monitor their server and keep it backed up than they would if they went with Google Apps. And for a little more than they pay me, they could go to Office 365 and get tons of Office Suite installs.

What do you guys think?

What's the current state of Exchange-as-a-cloud-service? Just randomly Googling, it seems that RackSpace offers Exchange for $10/user. Something like that lets them keep the same look and feel, only a failure of the box in the basement isn't an instant catastrophe.

I suppose if I were building a clean-slate small legal office, I'd put them on Google Apps with a decently fast Internet connection and a consumer-grade router. I'd be tempted to get them a cheap file server as well, something with RAID5, but maybe all they really need is the USB port on that consumer-grade router with a cheap hard drive.

It's a consideration. Part of the impetus for this project is the fact that Exchange 2003 can't support anything past Outlook 2007 (as I've discussed on this forum here recently), so this is the biggest concern. These cloud services should be completely compatible with any of the new software that comes out, and if they're completely wedded to MS products, 365 can get them full installs on all their computers of the latest versions.


That's exactly what I'd like to do. They'll be doing digital file management, so they should have a local place to store scans from their new copier. Though, the models they're looking at can do cloud storage...

Do any of their cases oppose the government? In other words, do they act as "Defense" lawyers? If so, I wonder how their clients would feel about all of their private records/info being made fully government accessible?

Just a thought.

You're right that the U.S. government has been caught with its proverbial pants down, but the sort of defendant who might hire a mom-and-pop legal shop isn't likely to be on the NSA's radar. Also, consider the risks if the government were exposed as having gone through attorney-client privileged information. The blowback from that would be nightmarish. Most any judge would dismiss the defendant and hold the government's attorneys personally in contempt. Or worse.

Also, it's worth noting that lawyers, more so than anybody else, have finely tuned antenna for what should be in writing and what should be ephemeral. For most lawyers I've dealt with, emails are for arranging phone calls. Phone calls, then, are assumed to be unrecorded. If it came out that the government were recording the content, not the metadata, of entirely domestic phone calls (many subject to attorney-client privilege) and was using that data without having the appropriate warrants... it wouldn't be pretty in court.

Not to say that such things haven't been going on. With all the Snowden revelations, it's hard to say when it's all going to end.

You're both right, but I don't think it's much of a concern. This is an estate planning firm mostly.

Though the government might have an interest in invalidating everything the firm has set up, so their clients' money goes to Uncle Sam

Mr. Google or Mr. Microsoft or Mr. AWS or whomever would _also_ have potential access to the cloud based documents and communications.

It almost getting crowded listing all the entities that have to be trusted in order to be comfortable with cloud computing ...

Well I'd like to avoid this debate if possible. It really comes down to whether you trust a business or the government, and there are arguments for one over the other and for neither.

But no matter what, the email is going to go through someplace - we don't have a choice about that - and one of the clearest points to come out of everything we've learned is that your ISP is probably the weakest link in the chain for all of this stuff.

Basically I'm saying that it's foolish to think that just because you're hosting your own email server you're safe from the prying eyes of the NSA. It doesn't matter.

So yes, having your files on a server would make them less easily seen by the government. But then you're more susceptible to the other drawbacks of local storage.

I was mostly referring to document storage rather than email, since secure end-to-end email communication is a non-existent thing for most small companies.

I don't know how such things are currently viewed in the lawyering business but having a duty to maintain privacy of confidential documents rubs up against the reality of trusting an external entity with those same documents.

I'd probably set them up with a local file server and off-site encrypted backup. You want to make sure the office doesn't completely grind to a halt if the Internet connection dies. At least their phones would let them read their email.

I probably don't know enough about this whole cloud vs home business for my opinion to be worth anything... but that won't stop me from expressing it.

My concern over cloud storage isn't that some unauthorized person might look at it, but rather that someone other than myself is responsible for keeping it intact. I keep backups of my backups, with a copy at my neighbor's house in the next block. How secure are Google's (or Amazon's, or whoever's) data storage systems? Could someone determined enough physically destroy them? Could someone press the wrong button and accidentally erase them? I did that this morning to an email I had spent 40 minutes composing. I went to copy it to the clipboard so I could paste it into Google Translate, and for whatever reason my keyboard didn't register the "Ctrl" key, so my email was replaced by the letter "c". Before I could Ctrl-Z and undo it, Gmail auto-updated the draft.

What about speed of access? If I had to retrieve a 500MB file from the cloud, it would take me almost six minutes before I could open it, as opposed to less than three seconds when it sits on my hard drive.

I dunno... I'm uncomfortable not having direct hands-on control of my data.

tanstaafl.

SpiderOak FTW!

Unfortunately, their enterprise plans are likely prohibitively expensive for a small office.

That's what's so attractive about it for near everyone else, though! My backups consist of regular sync to an external USB drive that sits behind my monitor. And that's a relatively recent implementation. Before that, there were no backups.

Maybe I don't have current info about US average internet data link badniwdth, but I can't imagine any organization doing any business without a local file server just due to performance issue. Not to mention lack of access to data due to ISP down time.

I'd definitely recommend a local server for file storage, or a cheaper Synology NAS, and IN ADDITION to that a cloud-based, encrypted backup.

This organization has Verizon FiOS, which is capable of 300mbps. I haven't had my own FiOS connection go out for more than a total of ~10 hours over the last 7 years.

Besides, most small businesses aren't able to get anything done these days if the internet is out, regardless of where their files are located.

You mean 300Mbps, symmetric, guaranteed? Business-class, basically?! Wow. Wow! Here not even there's no such service available, but if there was, no small law-firm could afford it.

But how is the latency to their file share in the cloud?

Not quite, but close. It's not symmetric (300 down and 65 up), and it's not available everywhere, but you can get pretty darn fast on their standard plans (75/35). I have the 50/25 plan, and right now I'm getting around 52/38 in speed tests. I've never tested a Fios connection that was getting less than what the person was paying for it, so yes it's pretty much guaranteed. That's what's nice about fiber versus cable.

Oh, and I was incorrect about their top speed. They have a 500/100 plan.

Those fastest plans aren't cheap, though. They have 500/100 for $299/month, and 300/65 for $209/month. But when you get down to the standard plans, you can get 75/35 for $69/month - well in the range of a small business. 75/35 is more than enough for any small law firm like this. They'll never use up all that bandwidth, even the upstream.

Working on large files on local shares - LAN - at 100Mbps can be less than ideal. I'd be careful on moving a business entirely on the cloud unless you are really sure about the type of performance you are going to get.


As to prices, while you have all sorts of ADSL lines for home claiming - and possibly offering - 50 or 60 Mbps downstream at 30-60 Euors/month, here in Italy a business class fiber optics 100Mbps symmetric data link is 3000 (three thousand) euros /month. France and Spain have similar - slightly lower - prices.
I don't know exactly what is being offered by FiOS, but what you describe sounds phenomenal.

The cloud services I'm talking about are they type where you work on the files in-browser. The office wouldn't have a file open over FTP or something, with every change they make waiting to be updated on the server side. With all modern cloud productivity suites, the changes are made locally and saved remotely in the background.

This is a law firm I'm talking about, too. I most likely wouldn't move a business like an architectural firm over to the cloud, since they're working with huge files, but a law firm is working with text documents, and given the size of the firm it's not like they're dealing with 500 page patent cases.


To clarify: Verizon Fios isn't DSL. It's fiber. I don't know of any local DSL companies that can offer more than around 3-5Mbps, which is why I've been moving several people off of DSL, which just couldn't keep up. I wasn't sure if there was confusion there or you were just relaying your local DSL speeds.

Even cable internet has gotten way faster. Around here you can get 100Mbps, but it's a little more expensive at $90/month and has the limitations of cable like slowdowns during heavy traffic periods.

Sorry, I am afraid it wasn't clear myself. I meant: here in Italy, for that low price, you only get ADSL lines promising, and often not delivering, that level of performance (downstream).
I understand you are using fiber optics. Here, 300Mbps fiber is available only at corporate-class prices. And so are real 100Mbps, actually. So, I think it is great you can get that good data link! That makes cloud based services way more appealing.

I think that if you can get an actual speed of 100Mbps or above, with low latency, you can even replicate the standard file management paradigm of Windows or OSX, without needing to go through an internet browser.

Here's a slightly different scenario, and I have no idea how to direct this person.

An accountant has asked me how he can move into the cloud. He's interested in moving out of his centralized office and wants to be able to work from home and have his assistant and an occasional partner all able to work from where they are.

The biggest challenge here, IMO, is that he has several unique situations. First, the way he handles things is to have companies send him their Quickbooks company files. This means he ends up with files made in different versions of Quickbooks. He can't open these files in his latest version of the program because then he couldn't send it back to the client who wouldn't be able to open it anymore.

I have no idea how to get around this and let him work from home. He couldn't just use Quickbooks online. Is there a way he could access this on a server in a virtual machine or something? And then have another user log in to another VM and also use any of these applications? I don't know if this would work...

These are different things. I suggest you examine his motives for moving to "someone else's computer" -- which is what I'm calling the cloud these days. If all he wants is to work from home, he can use a VPN.

True. I think he'd like to not rely on his own hardware, though. I'll try to suggest the VPN approach.

I'm just the opposite: the thought of relying on someone else's hardware to keep my data seems [IMHO] illogical.

Is it because his home hardware might be inadequate to the task? Remind him that his data is worth far more than the cost of a new and we assume powerful and reliable computer.

tanstaafl.

Some people don't want to be responsible for maintaining the actual hardware, being on-call to reboot something, or other administrivia.

I move everything I can to the cloud because I'm tired of coming in to work at 2AM to reboot something or wait for Verizon to repair a T1 line. I'm not afraid of Amazon AWS looking at our data. It's simply unlikely that it happens. And, if it does, what are they going to do with it? Shop it around to our competition? That scenario is just too silly to imagine compared to the benefits of cloud computing.

For us, the main benefits are the ability to cut-back on the data pipe(s) coming into this building. We run on what's basically consumer-grade cable service for $80 per month now. Previously, our phone (T1) and data costs were about $1300 per month and I had to do all the grunt work. Now we pay less than 1/4 that price, have more flexibility, and I don't have to deal with nearly as much bullshit.

As for hosting data and other stuff in the cloud, I'm all for it. I have been trying to justify moving everything to AWS or Azure for the past few months. Put thin clients on the desks here, give people 4G-connected tablets, and host everyone's desktop in the cloud. Unfortunately, the amount of data we would run through would be too costly at this time. If it weren't for the price issue, the physical servers we have now would all be gone.

But, cloud computing is a personal choice. You certainly don't have to embrace it if you don't want. It's a tool like anything else. You can leverage its power as much or as little as you're comfortable with.