Welcome to Kraft Kennedy

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act.  On January 18, 2012, from approximately 8am to 8pm EST, many internet sites will be turning themselves off in protest.  There are many articles and sites devoted to this and you can read a few of them via the links below.

If you are using the internet tomorrow and stumble upon a site that is participating in the blackout, you will need to either wait until the blackout is over or find another source for the information you are searching.  The simplest solution may be to use google or bing’s cache functionality to see a previous copy of the data.

Read more at:

http://sopastrike.com/

http://www.webpronews.com/sopa-blackout-set-for-january-18th-heres-all-the-info-2012-01

http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/22/2648219/stop-online-piracy-act-sopa-what-is-it

Kraft Kennedy is going to once again have a very large presence at the ILTA conference this year. We have three Kraft Kennedy consultants speaking on a range of topics from Exchange 2010 to application virtualization. We’ll have fourteen Kraft Kennedy consultants, CIOs, and lawyers in our booth ready to answer questions or provide guidance on all aspects of legal technology. And don’t forget about our yearly Golf Tournament where you’ll have a chance to win this year’s hot sports car!

This year we’re going to add something extra – private presentations from some of our experts on topics of interest to CIOs. These free, 30 minute presentation + Q/A sessions will be held in Kraft Kennedy’s private meeting room Ryman Studio I. You’ll have the opportunity to discuss Exchange with Microsoft Certified Master Joe Hoegler, talk about Application Virtualization with Kraft Kennedy Practice Leader Chris Owens, and more!

We’ve also made it easy to register to attend one of these presentations – simply click on one of the custom links next to each session date/time and it will create a pre-populated email to send to us. All you need to do is click Send!

We’re virtually there: How Application Virtualization Aids Deployments

We’re virtually there! Law firms have a number of options for managing application delivery to the end user. What’s the best way to manage application deployment in both the remote access and office environments? Is there a way IT can use one application package for both environments despite the many inherent differences? Join Kraft Kennedy as we explore current application streaming and virtualization options, also limitations and compatibility with current operating system deployments. We’ll discuss the advantages of moving to an application virtualization technology while comparing the major vendors in this area: Citrix Application Streaming, VMware ThinApp and Microsoft App-V.

Session Times:

• Wednesday at 10:30AM-11:30AM
• Thursday at 2:00PM-3:00PM

Microsoft Exchange 2010 for Law Firms

The current version of Microsoft’s enterprise messaging platform offers many benefits specific to law firms. A native e-mail archiving platform, discovery and compliance features, improved and simplified high availability and disaster recovery capabilities, and an additional reduction in the I/O requirements make Exchange 2010 an attractive, better-performing messaging platform. These exciting changes make Exchange 2010 a robust and flexible option for firms of all sizes but will require very careful planning to ensure a successful deployment and seamless transition. We will help you understand the specifics of these new features and maximize your investment in Microsoft Exchange

Session Times:

• Tuesday at 2:30PM-3:30PM
• Thursday at 9:15AM-10:30AM

SharePoint as a Legal Marketing Platform

Kraft Kennedy (in partnership with Lexis and Microsoft) will be introducing at ILTA the new SharePoint Legal Marketing Suite, to help firms improve their ability to build new clients through effective marketing programs. Kraft Kennedy’s new release helps Law Firm Marketing Departments manage key marketing content, proposal generation, and internet site content management.

Session Times:

• Tuesday at 10:30AM-11:30AM
• Thursday at 8:00AM-9:00AM

Cloud Computing and Why CIOs Should Pay Attention

Join us to discuss Cloud Computing as we try to unravel what it is and what it is not. We will discuss the following topics:

• Is it just marketing hype?
• Is it ready for prime-time?
• Will it save my firm money?
• What should we be doing to get ready for the cloud?
• When the managing partner says “Let’s go to the cloud”, how do I respond?
• Will Office 365, BPOS work at my firm?

Session Times:

• Wednesday at 8:00AM-9:00AM

Selling Your Vision — Strategic Budgeting and Planning

Join us to discuss how you should develop a strategic technology plan for your firm.

• How do you understand the direction the firm is going?
• Are we making the lawyers more productive?
• Are we improving client service and the bottom line?
• How do you sell your plan to management?
• What do you need to include in your plan?
• How do you market the plan to the rest of the firm?

Session Times:

• Tuesday at 4:30PM-5:30PM

What are the top technology issues confronting law firm CIOs in 2011?

Join us to discuss some of the top technology issues that law firm CIOs are looking to address in 2011, including:

• Adoption: delivering technology that is actually used to increase lawyer productivity and client service.
• Consumerization of Technology: responding to the ever-increasing demands generated by home use and the extensive technology experiences and biases of lawyers
• Data management: managing the exponential increases in data storage requirements, largely due to explosions in emails and attached files, and e-discovery requirements
• Mobility: achieving true device/platform independence (any computer) with ubiquitous access (anywhere, any time);
• Security: implementing and managing increasing security requirements being imposed by statute, regulation, and clients; maintaining all systems at current levels (patched) including centralized and end-user devices, all without downtime
• User Interface: simplifying the environment, or at least that portion directly supported by firm staff, in terms of numbers of applications and complexity of infrastructure.

Session Times:

• Tuesday at 8:00AM-9:00AM

Windows 7/Office 2010/SCCM 2012 – What’s New

Join us for real world, proven approaches to Windows 7 and Office 2010 Deployment with a special focus on what’s next with the impending releases of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2012 and the highly anticipated Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2012. The following topics will be discussed:

• Modular Deployment Methodology
• Single Image (Hardware-Agnostic)
• PXE-based Image Deployment
• Local Users vs. Local Admins
• Packaging of Applications
• Group Policy Preferences (GPP)
• Profile Management
• Consideration of Remote Access
• Application Vault

Session Times:

• Wednesday at 2:30-3:30
• Thursday at 11:00-12:00

Each year Kraft Kennedy sponsors the annual ILTA golf tournament. It’s typically the Sunday before the conference and a great way to start your week. You can expect a great turnout each year and prizes awarded for top teams and best shots. Who knows, maybe you will get lucky and win our car giveaway on the back 9 – this year was a 2010 Porsche 911.

Here are some photos from this year’s event.

Additional photos can be found here. Special thanks to Cindy Mahoney for these great shots!

We would love to hear what you thought of the event. Thanks for playing and we’ll see you again next August.

Dave Carlson David Carlson ILTA Kraft Kennedy KKL

The 2010 12th Annual ILTA Golf Tournament was a great success! Kraft Kennedy would like to thank our co-sponsors: WorkShare, Cypress Communications and Dell-Equallogic for helping to put on a great event.

Over 60 people came out and we would like to congratulate the following teams who received trophies this year:

1st Place
Fernando Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
Brandon Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
John Sroka, Younts
Vito Squarciafico, Pullman & Comley

2nd Place
Chris Owens, Kraft Kennedy
John Sawyer, Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP
Dana Rotter, Holme Roberts & Owen
Frank Nelson, Linquist & Vennum PLLP

3rd Place
Joey Perez, American LegalNet, Inc.
Ken Levonaitis, McCarter & English
Mike Walls, US Army
Ted Glutz, Kraft Kennedy

Thanks to everyone who came out and we look forward to seeing you again next year!

It is hot, the end of summer, it must be time for ILTA. This year the annual conference will be held in Las Vegas and the theme is Strategic Unity. Kraft Kennedy will again play an active role in conference. In fact, we will have 13 management and technical consultants attending the conference this year.  We’re also a Platinum Sponsor once again.  We’d love for you to stop by and talk about technology, enter our raffle, or just say hello.  Here is where you can find us:
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Clients complain about the multiplicity of law firm extranets, all different but not better, and the nuisance of maintaining passwords for each one. Can a group of firms collaborate to steer development of a tool useful to all, to build the “extranet as FedEx”— a common facility that many firms and their clients can use, in the interests of both economy and convenience? Is it true that firms compete on the quality of content, not the shape of envelopes?
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I recently had the good fortune to attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas, which outlined the new features in SharePoint 2010.  Below are some of the things I took away.  I think this will be a huge improvement over the current version, and will offer a lot of very compelling new features, and a lot of good reasons to make the upgrade.

General Comments

The Beta will be released in November.  Final product will be released in the first half of 2010.

Microsoft is focusing on making the upgrade and updates easier.  You can upgrade the back end, while still keeping the master pages (look and feel of sites) the same.  Then you can upgrade the master page at the site level to test and get all of the new features.

Everything is 64 bit.  It requires SQL 2005 / 2008 64-bit, and Windows 2008 64-bit.  The server must have at least 4 GB of RAM.

A level 1 browser is required for users (IE 7 or 8, or FireFox 3) plus SilverLight for the best experience.

WSS is now called Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, and is still free.  SharePoint Designer is still free.  SharePoint Server still has Standard and Enterprise CALs.

There’s a limitation on data storage now if you don’t have SQL… The basic install uses SQL Express now (rather than Windows Internal Database in the old version), which has a 4 GB data limit.  So we should keep this in mind for small projects, and typically recommend SQL Server.

SharePoint has emerged as an entire platform, and Microsoft believes this will bring ECM to the masses, BI to the masses, etc.  Microsoft is also positioning this as a full featured internet-facing platform, as well as an intranet / extranet portal which 2007 was though of.

SharePoint should be evaluated along with Office 2010, since the integration is now extremely tight.  SharePoint can be the access point for all of the firm information.

The most impressive things I saw in 2010 were the workflow enhancements in 2010 and the Office web applications.  In many instances I couldn’t tell whether they were demoing things in the rich Office client or in the Office web app—the user experience is almost identical in either case!
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Tuesday was a exciting day at ILTA 2009 with lots of great sessions and discussions throughout the day.  About the only part of the day that wasn’t so great was the turkey bacon served at breakfast, which had the texture of construction paper and the flavor of it as well.

The morning saw a number of really good sessions, such as the session entitled “G100 Recap: Weathering the Storm and Cloud Computing.”  A number of key points were raised, such as the acknowledgment that technology spending was sacrificed during the economic downturn during the past couple of years.  The panelists believe that IT will actually help lead firms out of the recession and allow them to complete projects to help overall productivity.  On the subject of cloud computing, it was said that most law firms will likely begin to get exposure through telephony systems where there is less of the privacy concerns of other cloud based applications.

If you’re interested in exploring cloud computing in greater detail, Kraft Kennedy’s John Tsiofas and Dave Carlson will be speaking on data center relocation and cloud computing at 11:00AM on Wednesday in the Maryland C ballroom.

Also in the morning was a great session called “From the Trenches: Office 2007 Deployment Lessons.”  Here three different firms talked about their experiences, both good and bad, in upgrading to Office 2007.  The general consensus from the panelists was that the ribbon bar, the biggest visual change in the Office 2007 suite, actually turned out to be an insignificant issue overall.  The larger concerns were around application integration with document management systems and add-ins to Office applications that cause instability and performance issues.  In fact, one panelist described the project as “The document management system project featuring Office 2007,” highlighting the importance of the integration between Office 2007 and the DMS.

Office 2010 may have some of the same challenges.  Feel free to stop by Kraft Kennedy’s booth (721/723) to get a first hand look at Office 2010 running in our VDI environment.  The VDI desktops also feature Windows 7 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, so stop by and check them out!

VDI, or virtual desktop infrastructure, seems to be a hot topic at the conference this year.  Firms are starting to recognize that there are many benefits that can come with implementing a VDI solution, both in terms of financial savings as well as ease of administration and management.  We’ve spoken with many firms at the conference already this year that are starting to look at VDI as an alternative to traditional desktop deployment strategies.  We think the release of Windows 7 is also helping to drive VDI interest and adoption, as is the acceptance of virtualization technology in general.

With cost savings in mind, firms are also talking about how to contain costs or continue to reduce them.  Technologies like virtualization are helping to reduce costs as firms work to extend their hardware investments.  Developing a sound technology strategy has also been a reoccurring topic throughout the day as firms are preparing for what is coming next and want to ensure their strategy makes good business sense.

Finally, the day ended with the “Tut After Dark” party and casino night and everyone had a great time.  Even the party is a great place to learn new things, such as this blogger learning just how quickly you can lose $25,000 at the high rollers craps table.  But hey, it sure was a fun four minutes of my life!