As long as there have been law firms, there has been some form of document management system (DMS).NetDocuments takes DMS onto the Internet, marking the next evolution of the concept. Instead of residing in a number of servers in your firm server room, NetDocument stores your documents in secure datacenters, all interfaced via the web, a web browser, and your Microsoft Office applications. Being an online solution, NetDocuments' provides clear advantages in availability, search, and backup.
Everywhere you go these days there is Internet access, whether through wi-fi at the coffee shop or through a 3G cellular connection and card. With NetDocuments, your documents are available securely anywhere you have Internet access, such as at home, at the client, or even the park outside the client's campus headquarters. Lose your wi-fi connection, no need to worry if you have "echoing" turned on. With echoing, NetDocuments keeps a local copy of recent documents and syncs it once Internet access is restored.
NetDocuments not only encrypts your documents stored in its secure datacenters; but uses the same encryption methods for transmitting documents across the Web that are used in security operations.
But accessibility means nothing if you cannot find your documents, and search is another area where NetDocuments excels. Too often we encounter clients who have abandoned searching their DMS system because the complex and delicate search engine (specifically, the "indexer") has broken. The client lacks the expertise to fix it, so the attorneys go without search. NetDocuments uses the excellent FAST search engine on your documents, and maintains a staff whose sole job is to make sure the search engine is operating at maximum performance. Therefore searching is always available, without any upkeep on your part.
Finally, for NetDocuments monthly subscription fee you are also getting a disaster recovery solution included. Your documents are backed up and mirrored between NetDocuments secure and hardened datacenters. Should some disaster befall your local offices, your documents are still safe and accessible. The cost savings compared to a traditional disaster recovery scenario including replicating servers and data in a remote site are substantial. Going with NetDocuments for DMS also means getting a DR solution for your documents at the same time for a very lost cost compared to traditional DR solutions.
So while some may resist the movement to data and applications available through the Internet, "the Cloud" as the current jargon calls it, the benefits from NetDocuments are clear and compelling. Google-style speed and performance in search; practically anytime/anywhere availability and built-in disaster recovery for a predictable monthly cost make managing your documents in the Cloud a better option.