File Storage and Access
Have you ever been in court and needed access to that vital case file, and NOW? In today’s fast-moving environment, mobility is for attorneys what simply having technology was 10-15 years ago. More and more of our clients are accessing their vital data from laptops, tablets and smartphones when out of the office. With a traditional VPN, this setup can be clunky, hard to use and expensive. Luckily, multiple options have arisen to address this need.
Dropbox
Dropbox, founded in 2007, is the most simple, and most ubiquitous of the file storage services. Almost everyone is familiar with it, due to its high use in personal circles and early arrival to the market. Dropbox provides 2GB of free storage to anyone who registers for an account, and has upgraded accounts with as much data as you need with the addition of Dropbox for Teams and Dropbox Pro. If you’re operating a small or solo firm, odds are, Dropbox is all you’ll need. With great app support across essentially all platforms, you’ll have access to your files on the go from anywhere.
Box
Box (formerly Box.net) is a storage service similar to Dropbox, but Box differs in a couple of different ways. Being founded as a service for businesses, Box gives you several higher end options over Dropbox, including permissions, custom branding, online document editing and superior organization and sharing options. At $15/month/user for 1TB of storage, it’s still affordable for pretty much any firm.
Are you a larger firm that needs higher-end options such as more storage, Salesforce.com integration or Active Directory integration? Box has you covered on that front as well with their Enterprise plans.
NetDocuments
Are you a larger firm that is moving from something along the lines of WorldDox or WorkSite and have a need for tight integrations between your systems? NetDocuments could be just what you’re looking for. Although its feature set is overkill for a lot of smaller firms, NetDocuments has a number of benefits for larger firms, including:
– Matter-centric structure
– Office and e-mail integration
– Versioning support
– Metadata and document profiling
– Strong third party integrations
– Client extranet functions
– Powerful full-text searches
NetDocuments also has a great network of both on staff resources as well as a robust consultant network to help your firm make the jump to the cloud for document management.
Conclusion
In the end, all three are great options for storage on the go. Which one you choose depends on your firm’s size, budget and specific IT requirements. If you need help transitioning your firm to the cloud, reach out to one of these companies and they’ll be happy to help.