Matt Leach, one of our expert Azure Consultants, has penned this blog all about the growing IT trend for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and how your cloud environment could benefit from this open-source container-orchestration system.

But before we skip to the good the bit we need to jump back and explain a bit more about where Kubernetes came from and how it works.

First off, what is containerisation?

Containerisation in brief terms is a method of splitting up a machine into multiple layers which are all isolated. Containers allow for a portable approach for application development and offer increased flexibility. Whether it’s important for your business to be able to take your application to any cloud hosting provider, or maybe you would like to use different services such as Kubernetes, Docker, Azure Web App for Containers – containers offer this flexibility and portability. Lastly, containerisation provides a method of moving away from monolithic application architectures and allows you to move to a microservice-based application architecture, which in return, allows you to modernise your web applications.

Why should you use containerisation?

If you imagine your application as it currently stands, it is likely that you are hosting it on virtual machines. If you have 3 applications, you may be running it on 3 virtual machines. The same applies if you have a large application environment that may be running tens if not hundreds of applications. You will need a lot of virtual machines to host these applications. The downfall of hosting all these virtual machines is the fact that someone needs to patch and maintain all of these machines. If you are using Windows virtual machines, you will also need to license all these virtual machines.

This is where containers thrive. Whether you’re running Docker, Kubernetes, AKS as your container orchestration tool, you can run multiple containers on a cluster containing as little as one virtual machine. Of course, we recommend you think about high availability and performance when planning how many virtual machines you need, however, if you’re running hundreds of applications, you will definitely see the benefit of running them (if compatible) on containers as opposed to individual virtual machines.

Where does Kubernetes come into this?

Kubernetes is an open-source system to allow containerised applications to be deployed into a controlled environment – as all of us tech enthusiasts call a cluster. Kubernetes was originally developed and designed by Google, however, in 2015 it was released as an open-source project for the wider community to contribute towards. If you’ve heard of Docker before, it’s a very similar concept to that.

Welcome, Azure Kubernetes Service!

In 2018 Microsoft released AKS as a managed Kubernetes offering. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Cloud Direct welcomed AKS with open arms. AKS brought more simplicity to the product for customers. Allowing them to spend more time developing their applications – for greater business benefit – instead of having to manage various aspects of Kubernetes that could break at any time. At a high level the following components are required for a Kubernetes cluster:

• Kube-controller manager
• Cloud-controller manager
• Kube API server
• Etcd
• Kube-scheduler
• Kubernetes nodes (including kube-proxy and kubelet)

 

With AKS, Microsoft have assumed the day-to-day responsibilities of Kubernetes, removing a lot of the previous management pain, allowing customers to just look after the most important parts of their business. This leaves customers only needing to managing the following:

• Virtual nodes – These are virtual machines that run within your Kubernetes cluster to host the containers/pods.
• Containers/Pods – These run on the nodes within your cluster. These are running your applications that are containerised.
• Container Images – These are your applications that have been containerised to work within containers.

The burning question – How much does AKS cost?

The good news – AKS service itself is free! You are only required to pay for the virtual machines that your applications run on. With the flexibility AKS provides, you can take advantage of autoscaling. Maybe you only have applications that run for several months out of the year as opposed to all year round. Then you can scale your cluster down to zero virtual machines if required which means you don’t pay a penny. Alternatively, maybe you have an application that runs at high demand towards the end of the month, but then it’s quiet for the first 3 weeks of the month. Autoscaling will scale out your cluster to as many virtual machines as you need it too. You can of course configure this to ensure there is a limit, so you don’t get a nasty surprise when your bill comes through.

Let Microsoft handle demand for your application, so you can concentrate on the business benefits your application offers.

Why choose AKS rather than migrating as virtual machines?

You may be wondering why you would use AKS and containers rather than migrating virtual machines. There are cases where virtual machines would be a better fit, this of course depends on the application you’re looking to migrate or modernise. However, most of the time, web applications are a great start to look at containerising. The following benefits come with using containers as opposed to using virtual machines:

• Cost – Only pay for what you require. Maybe you have certain parts of the month where the demand for your application is higher – let Microsoft autoscaling do the work to ensure you are only using the resources that your application needs.
• Isolation – Applications running containers in AKS can be completely isolated from each other, unless of course you need them to communicate with each other.
• Flexibility – You can run your applications on Linux, Windows, or both!
• Less patching – With less virtual machines, comes less maintenance. Allow your engineers to be creative in other areas that will increase the benefits to your business.
• Zero downtime upgrades – Rolling upgrades to your applications happen seamlessly with no down time. When you upgrade your application image and push to a container registry, AKS will deploy your application next to your current application. When AKS decides your containers are healthy, it will softly shut down your old version of the container and users will use the newly patched application. No more rebooting virtual machines after upgrades!
• Support for Microservices – Microservices are a great candidate for containers and AKS. Run each one of your services in a different pod. This will allow you to patch each service at a time as opposed to taking down the whole application. If you need to connect to a database such as SQL, you can integrate AKS with Azure SQL PaaS services, or choose to run your database in your AKS cluster – the choice is yours.

Conclusion

I hope this article has helped you to understand Kubernetes and containerisation a little more. Kubernetes is gaining traction rapidly and the customers we have helped to move, are already reaping the benefits that AKS offers.

Hear Matt talk more about Azure Kubernetes Service, application migration best-practice and the tools available to securely scale in Azure in our upcoming webinar on Thursday 6^th August – Azure Security: Applications & Data. Find out more and sign up here.

Can’t watch live? Not a problem. All registrants will receive a recording of the webinar.

Discover our latest promotions to support your business ambitions.

To match our current offers to your business objectives we need to know what you are looking to achieve.

Microsoft 365 was initially launched in 2017 as a licensing bundle for enterprise customers. The bundle provides customers with a combination of Microsoft’s most popular tools – Office, Windows and Enterprise Mobility and Security (EMS). The product has come a long way since then and is now best described as “the world’s productivity cloud” thanks to their integrated applications and services that allow you to harness the power of artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge tech to work for you.

In March, Microsoft announced they are launching the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Subscriptions. Alongside this, Microsoft has changed their Office 365 subscriptions for small and medium-sized businesses – moving forward all those products will go by the Microsoft 365 brand.

The new product names came into effect on Tuesday 21^st April. If you are already a subscriber, your subscription name will change automatically – and there will be no change in price or features for the time being. The product name changes are outlined below:

• Office 365 Business Essentials will become Microsoft 365 Business Basic.
• Office 365 Business Premium will become Microsoft 365 Business Standard.
• Microsoft 365 Business will become Microsoft 365 Business Premium.
• Office 365 Business and Office 365 ProPlus will both become Microsoft 365 Apps. Where necessary we will use the “for business” and “for enterprise” labels to distinguish between the two.

Sourced from Microsoft’s website.

Microsoft may have only announced name changes, but this sets them up to continue driving innovation within Microsoft 365. Within the past few years’ they’ve brought you features such as Teams, Cloud App Security and more. But it doesn’t stop there. Microsoft has plenty of new innovations that will be coming to Microsoft 365 in the coming months.

If you’d like to discuss what Microsoft 365 subscription would be best for your business, please get in contact with our experts.

Businesses across the world have had to quickly rollout remote working solutions to ensure employees can work remotely when needed. There are plenty of platforms out there to provide your employees with the ability to seamlessly communicate and collaborate whilst working remotely. The top three solutions that have taken the market by storm are Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts. Whilst they all have similar features at a glance, there are some key differences that you should consider before investing. In this guide we compare the three solutions, so you can see which is best suited to support your business needs.

At a glance…

Feature list	Microsoft Teams	Zoom	Google Hangouts
Starting price	$5.00	£11.99	Custom
Platforms supported	Web based, iPhone App, Android App, Windows App	Web based, iPhone App, Android App	Web based, iPhone App, Android App, Windows App
HD Audio and Video Conferencing	✓	✓	✓
Record any call	✓	✓	✓
Transcribe any call	✓	✓	✓
Screen share	✓	✓	✓
Instant messaging	✓	✓	✓
Take control of someones screen within a call	✓	✓	✓
Integrates with other apps and bots	✓	✓	✓
Blur background on video calls	✓
Comprehensive security controls	✓
Fully integrates with Office 365	✓

There are free versions available of all three platforms, but for this blog post, we are comparing the paid-for licenses.

You can see from the surface there isn’t much difference between the platforms. But once we dig deeper we will unveil the real differences between the products.

 

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a unified communication and collaboration platform made up of an instant messenger, video conferencing, file storage and application integration. There are now 44 million daily Microsoft Teams users, making this Microsoft’s fastest-growing product. Microsoft Teams is more than just a communication tool – it empowers your employees to collaborate even whilst working remotely. Microsoft Teams will allow you to fully integrate with Office 365, meaning all calendar invites, files and chats will simultaneously sync with the rest of your modern office.

Communication

Some of the key communication features of Microsoft Teams include:

• Internal and external video conferencing with the ability to blur backgrounds – minimising any distractions.
• Audio conferencing with the ability to enable in-line transcriptions of your calls.
• A seamless file and screen sharing experience which others can take control of.
• Instant messaging between other employees. Either one-to-one or in groups.
• The ability to record any video or audio call – allowing you to share it or relate to it later.

Collaboration

But it doesn’t stop there. Microsoft Teams is not just a powerful communication platform, but also a place for employees to collaborate effectively. Some of the key Teams collaboration features are:

• Share any files with teams or individuals and edit them in real-time.
• Access Microsoft Teams from any device – allowing employees to work from any location, anytime.
• There are endless bots and integrations to improve
• Seamlessly integrate with your email, allowing you to access contacts, emails and shared calendars.

Security

Microsoft invests over $1 billion every year to improve the security of their products. Microsoft Teams is built on the security and compliance capabilities of Office 365 – so you can be reassured your business will stay protected whilst communicating through Teams. You’ll reap all the security benefits of Office 365, such as advanced threat protection and data loss prevention. But it doesn’t stop there. Microsoft Teams meets the compliance obligations of over 42 national, regional and industry-specific regulations.
And if that doesn’t demonstrate how secure Microsoft Teams is, internationally renowned computer security expert Professor Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey, recently said that “where I have taken part in government briefings where it is for the participants’ ears only we have used Microsoft Teams”.

Did you know, Microsoft has created a Zoom for Teams add-on, allowing you to join external Zoom calls within Microsoft Teams.

 

Zoom

Zoom is a cloud-based audio and video communication platform, allowing people to communicate across different devices. If you’re looking for a platform where you can confidently communicate with others, then Zoom may be right up your street. In 2020, Zoom has received 2.22 million new users, most of which are people wanting to stay in contact with their friends and family during COVID-19.

Communication

Some of the key communication features are as follows:

• Full HD video and audio.
• Ability to record and transcribe any session.
• Share your screen with other participants.
• Can support up to 1,000 participants.
• The option to upload images as backgrounds.

Collaboration

• Integrates with Outlook and Gmail.
• Screen sharing and co-annotation.
• Chat within a group you’re in.
• Have the ability to share any files with other participants.

Security

Zoom prides itself on its end-to-end encryption. However, Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker and now principal security researcher at Jamf, has recently identified two bugs within Zoom that he shared with TechCrunch. One of the bugs allows an attacker to take control of someone’s computer, allowing them to install malware or spyware. The second bug exploits a flaw in how Zoom handles the webcam and microphone on Macs. Zoom, like any app that needs the webcam and microphone, first requires consent from the user.

 

Google Hangouts

Hangouts is Google’s communication platform. It started as part of Google+ before becoming its standalone product in 2013. It’s safe to say it sits between Zoom and Microsoft Teams in terms of functionality. Again, Google Hangouts has become increasingly popular amongst friends and families to communicate during COVID-19. But here’s how it could support your business:

Communication

Google Hangouts provides employees with the basics when it comes to a communication platform.

• You’ll have an instant messaging feature at your disposal.
• All audio and video calls will be in HD.
• Have the ability to use Hangouts across multiple devices.

Collaboration

Similar to Microsoft Teams, Hangouts will integrate with the rest of your G-Suite products. But how good is Hangouts for collaboration?

• Share your screen with other participants.
• Have full integration with your G-Suite.

Google also pride themselves with end-to-end encryption within Hangouts. Meaning if you did want to use it as your business communication tool, you could.

 

What’s the right communication platform for me?

So, there we have it. If at this point, you’re still unsure on what platform to use, fear not. If you’re just looking for a simple audio and video conferencing tool, then Zoom or Google Hangouts might be the platforms for you… depending on how security conscious your business is of course. But if you’re looking more comprehensive collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams is your answer. Unified communication and collaboration platform which seamlessly integrates with your existing Microsoft applications to empower your employees.

For us, there’s a clear winner. And that’s Microsoft Teams. But it’s not just us who thinks that. 91% of the Fortune 500 already use it.

Want to find out more about Microsoft Teams? Our experts can help. Simply get in contact today to discover how you can harness the power of Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Azure is a business treasure box of opportunity. Not sold on Azure yet? Find out why you should be here. For those of you already on board, once you’ve dabbled in the shallows of the public cloud, before you deep dive into its enticing depths you need a buddy. An expert to pro-actively support your business investment. That’s what our Azure Managed Services are for.

To help you understand the value of an Azure Expert Managed Service Provider, I’ve compiled the top five benefits our customers love.

Increase ROI

The flexible cost structure of Azure is one of its biggest selling points. But without the right structure and tools in place, it can become a full-time job trying to keep track of costs. Our Azure Managed Services include regular cost efficiency reviews and enhancements where our team of expert engineers identify opportunities to manage and operate your environment in the most cost-efficient way possible. Right-sizing Azure resource to match the workloads they’re used for, spotting un-used items and checking the most cost-effective licenses are being used are all included. These continued proactive reviews ultimately match cost to need.

“With Cloud Direct we are working more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before.”

Habib Bilfaqi, Network Manager, IPC

Proactive optimisation

Managed Azure is more than keeping the lights on. As an Azure Expert MSP (find out why that’s important here) we’re at the forefront of Microsoft’s latest technical advancements and Azure best practice. The wealth of experience we’ve gained gives our expert teams the confidence to tailor our client’s environments to meet their unique requirements and growth goals. They monitor performance, speed and reliability and optimisation wherever possible, all to ensure your Azure environment will operate as expected with provisions to minimise disruption.

“We knew we wanted to work in Azure, but we needed an expert partner who could explain the options available to us and help us develop our global cloud strategy. Rather than simply focusing on the technology, Cloud Direct’s specialist engineers listened to our business needs before exploring the different solutions that could work for us.”

Sanjay Sood, Global Executive, RSM UK

Protective security

Our customer’s security is our security. When we take on full management of their Azure environment, we take on shared responsibility for their cloud security, meaning it’s always personal. The threat landscape may be constantly changing, but so are we. And so is Microsoft. We use Azure Security Centre alongside a host of best practice tools and technologies to enable proactive security, which involves 24/7 monitoring of your Azure environment with over 200 pre-set alerts.

Adopting the latest Microsoft tools such as Azure Lighthouse means we’re able to further enhance the security we offer customers using technologies such as Microsoft 2 factor authentication, Conditional Access and Advanced Threat protection. Azure Lighthouse also allows us to have a centralised set of security policies that we can apply to all our customers at the same time. So, any patches or new best practice policies can be quickly and efficiently applied.

“Security is very high on our agenda, and we now have added confidence with Cloud Direct.”

Ian Russell, IT Consultant, 2TG

Supportive support

Your IT needs to be reliable, efficient and a strategic enabler. Our cloud consultants and developers are backed by a talented team of more than 100 world-class IT support staff to provide you with a fully managed IT service, available 24/7 for unlimited support with our Managed Services. As is our comprehensive knowledge base with thousands of support articles and guides. Whatever the question we have the answer. Our own in-house PROVIDE portal gives customers a centralised system to manage their IT all in one place. We’re talking everything from predicting Azure spend to raising support requests. Our PROVIDE portal has your back.

“I could just rely on their ability to do it, without having to spend too much of my time getting involved in things. It all worked in the background in a very smooth manner.”

Stewart Martin, Partner, Edmund Carr

Time to innovate

The role of internal IT is changing. Now the centre of business innovation, IT teams are supporting the wider business to optimise services and drive revenue. If they can find the time in between everyday system and hardware maintenance that is. As amazing as Azure is, your environment can’t be left to fend for itself. With a Managed Azure Service our experts and support teams in our Centre of Excellence can manage the day to day running of your Azure environment. Giving your IT team the most important gift of all – time.

“Around 80% of what we do now is focused on helping the business to move forward. We don’t worry about maintenance or upgrades at all thanks to Cloud Direct.”

 

Jason Moon, Head of IT, Simarco

“Cloud Direct has been great at helping us transform our business and lead the way in our market by supporting us to adopt the latest technology.”

Sebastian Ailioaie, Group Digital Manager, ACE

As you’ve just read when it comes to Azure, we’ve been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. Our experience plus advanced accreditation makes us one of the leading Microsoft Cloud Partners globally. We’re here for the long haul. Not just to lift and shift but to continue to apply our honed best practice optimisation tactics to drive your business growth whatever your goals may be.

 

If you want to find out more about our Azure Managed Services or just want to chat with someone outside of your household give us a call on 0800 0315 966 or drop us an email.

In reaction to the recent unprecedented need for all business to try and function as usual while their workforce is home-based, we’ve updated our Azure Windows Virtual Desktop service for rapid deployment. In a nutshell, this fast-deployed package allows specific employees or departments to access the applications or operating systems they need to do their job by implementing a secure virtual desktop environment while they work from home. Better yet if you already use Microsoft 365 or Windows 10 Enterprise you already have the licenses! Azure Windows Virtual Desktop: Rapid Deployment enables you to:

Access business-critical applications at home, just as if you’re in the office

Now more than ever business continuity is critical. Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) gives your employees’ access to your bespoke applications hosted on-site without any technical restrictions, in the safety if their home whilst still taking advantage of Microsoft’s enterprise-level security.

Utilise existing hardware or personal devices

Even if your teams don’t have a laptop and you can’t justify the expenditure, or you simply can’t manage the logistics required, WVD can be accessed from any personal device. Saving investment in hardware you’ll only need for a few months.

Access, deploy and rollout within four days

Our new remote rapid deployment service can be deployed in just four days, instantly building redundancy and resilience into your business. All of which, of course, be done remotely.

If you’d like to find out more about our new Azure Windows Virtual Desktop: Rapid Deployment service fill in the contact form below or give us a call on 0800 0315 966.

Unexpected events highlight the importance of establishing and keeping open lines of communication within an organisation.  The spread of COVID-19 has meant businesses have needed to adapt quickly to a developing situation. With the UK in lockdown, all but essential employees are now working remotely, and offices are remaining shut until further notice.

More employees are working from home than ever including many for the first time, which means sharing an announcement isn’t as easy as just gathering everyone in the office. It’s important to find new ways to communicate with your employees when needing to share information, providing them with the ability to stay in touch and with up-to-date health information from reputable sources

COVID-19 creates an increased risk of absence due to illness; it is, therefore, essential that businesses can accurately predict, track, react and allocate resources to cover business demand.

At Cloud Direct we’re working to do our part by ensuring the safety of our employees, striving to protect their health and well-being and providing technology, tips and resources to ensure everyone stays briefed on the situation and any likely business impacts. That’s why we have deployed the Microsoft Crisis Communication application. Now we want to show how you can use it too.

What is the Crisis Communication App?
Microsoft has released a Crisis Communication Application to help businesses cope with the current situation. You can see how many employees across your business are off sick and allocate resources accordingly to cover any absent staff.

Key features of the Crisis Communications Application
Key features of the Crisis Communication Application are as follows:

• Employees can report on their status. Employees will have the ability to report on their status and set out of office responses so you can have a clear view on who is working from home, working in the office, off sick, annual leave or self-isolating. This will allow you to track and coordinate your resources accordingly. You’ll also be able to keep ontop of everyone
• Push news and business updates to employees. Push any company news and updates to all employees, keeping them updated with the latest information.
• Share trusted sources with the business. Share an RSS feed from reputable sources such as the World Health Organisation (WHO). This way you can point your employees to trusted sources rather than getting muddled amongst COVID-19 myths and rumours.
• Share FAQs. Businesses are getting lots of questions daily and new updates are made available. You can upload any common questions you’ve been getting in this section and start directing employees to the FAQs section. You can also share links to the relevant policies e.g. home working or expenses.
• Send a message to a Teams channel. Users can submit questions to a monitored teams channel, allowing your HR teams to respond and direct any questions to relevant resources.

 

How we’ve been using the application

Cloud Direct has been using the Crisis Communication Application for a few weeks now and has been reaping benefits – helping the company better communicate with everyone working remotely.
Better tracking
With employees based across the UK, Europe and South Africa, keeping track of all staff can be challenging. Since rolling out the application we have been able to better track who is working and where they are working from. Allowing us to ensure resources are spread if someone is off ill. Plus, by tracking who is self-isolating, you will be able to claim their wages back.
Updating staff immediately
Within the application, we can push notifications immediately to all staff with any update or business news. This is a great way to share any updates you have on changes within the business or any urgent COVID-19 information worth sharing with employees.

How we can help
Our experts are ready to share the application with businesses to help them communicate better during this challenging period. We’re offering a free 20-minute demo and Q&A session to help you roll out the Crisis Communication Application within your organisation. Claim your free demo below.

If you have any questions on the Crisis Communication Application, home working or any other business challenges or would like further support during this time, please get in contact with us. Our experts are here to support you where they can during this period.

Moving to the cloud can be a daunting prospect for any organisation, and to remove that fear there are several key questions that every business needs to answer before they start their journey:

• What should I migrate?
• How should I do it?
• How do I manage costs?

But if you’re a not for profit organisation, the questions just keep coming:

• How can you ensure value is being found from your vital funding?
• Will there be disruption to vital support for service users?
• How can you complete a cloud migration with the limited resources many charities have?

To be able to proceed confidently you need a secure and safe starting point. A platform that you know will help you to make a positive change within your organisation and an expert partner to support your journey without exposing your organisation to risk.

A place from which you can take advantage of the vast possibilities in the cloud to transform the digital capabilities of your organisation. You need a safe landing zone and an expert partner to help you build it.

What are Landing Zones?

Landing zones are one of the first stages in Microsoft’s recommended Cloud Adoption Framework. Designed to help you build your own scalable Azure platform, the Azure Landing Zone is designed to give you a platform to build the scalable environment you want in Azure whilst meeting security and governance goals.

So how can the Landing Zone concept be applied to charities looking for growth in the cloud?

Get the Basic Building Blocks In Place

The landing zone concept refers to an environment that has been provisioned and prepared to host the essential workloads that you will be moving into Azure. In simple terms, this means making sure that you have ready the compute, network, storage and data you will need to successfully scale up in the cloud.

For not for profit organisations this could mean starting from the key services you provide to the people you engage with and working backwards from there.

For example, if your organisation works in social care, what are the applications that staff making visits require and what resources need to be applied to keep them working? If you have a webchat service that can be a key first port of call for people who need help, how can you make it more efficient and effective by hosting it in Azure?

Build Governance From The Start

Effective governance is vital in any not for profit organisation, and nothing changes when looking to scale in Azure! Keeping track of the access, costs and security of your Azure environment is perhaps the key component of building a scalable and trusted platform for growth.

In the landing zone process, this means creating a clear plan for costs, access control, subscription level policies and more. For many not for profits this means the senior IT decision-maker working with a partner such as Cloud Direct as an Azure Expert MSP to ensure this is consistently built into the platform.

Understand The Risks But Avoid The Myths!

There are many myths about moving infrastructure to the cloud, many of which contribute to organisations holding themselves back from scaling their environments in Azure.

These myths can be particularly effective in the not for profit sector, where budgets and teams are tight and all resources are focused on the achievement of the overall mission.

The Azure Landing Zone process helps you to manage these concerns and make decisions based on the facts available. If something isn’t viable to move into the cloud yet, keep it out of the Landing Zone and build your hybrid strategy. For the other aspects of your infrastructure, our experts can work with you to optimise them for a scalable future in the cloud – with clarity on the costs and performance that give you the facts instead of the myths.

 Like what you hear and ready to learn more? Download our landing zones webinar today!

Our Azure Expert, Matt Leach, shows why landing zones are one of the first stages in Microsoft’s recommended Cloud Adoption Framework.

In this webinar we explore:

• What are Azure landing zones?
• How do landing zones help to achieve your security and governance goals?
• Building your scalable Azure platform

We recently partnered with Microsoft to host a legal roundtable in Bristol. Bringing together leading legal IT teams from across the South West to ask how legal businesses are utilising cloud technology to drive business growth. During this event, we discussed the trends and challenges the legal industry are currently facing and what Microsoft technologies can be used to help overcome these.

Don’t worry if you couldn’t attend. We’ve written up the key discussion points here, so you don’t have to miss a thing.

“Business as usual is not an option for many, indeed for any, traditional legal service providers. Innovation in services and service delivery will become a key differentiating factor.”
The Law Society ‘The Future of Legal Services’

Microsoft kicked off the discussion outlining the current trends and challenges legal businesses are facing. Which can be categorised into two key areas; Managing the realities of regulations, disruptive technology and changing business models and Meeting the expectations of increasingly digitally savvy clients.

We highlighted security as the biggest challenge many legal businesses are facing. With the cost of a security breach in the legal industry over £2,000,000 you can see why. So, we looked at how Microsoft cloud technology can help legal firms achieve their strict security goals by taking advantage of Microsoft’s annual investment of $1,000,000 in cyber security. This goes towards helping businesses enable digital transformation through a comprehensive platform, unique intelligence, and broad partnerships.

Microsoft then went on to discuss how legal businesses can start digitally transforming their business to keep up with changing industry trends. They broke it down into four key steps:

1. Engage your clients. The technologies available now will provide you with new and efficient ways to engage with your customers.
2. Optimise your matters. This will involve optimising your operations with the technology available, allowing you to focus on what truly matters.
3. Empower your professionals. Provide your employees with the digital tools they need. Allowing them to do what they do best.
4. Transform your proposition. This will involve transforming your products and services through the latest technology.

Cloud Direct’s Lead Azure Consultant, Jeff Field, spoke about which Microsoft technologies legal business can adopt to help them digitally transform and meet the expectations of their clients and workforce.

Azure Sentinel

Azure Sentinel can help the legal industry continuously monitor security analytics for your entire business. In short, it provides you with a 360 view across your entire business highlighting any security alerts and sophisticated attacks. Microsoft Azure Sentinel focuses on monitoring four key areas;

• Collecting data at a cloud-scale
• Detect previously undetected threats
• Investigate threats with artificial intelligence
• Respond to incidents rapidly

 

Windows Virtual Desktop

Windows Virtual Desktop is a comprehensive VDI that’s delivered in Azure.

WVDI allows your legal business to deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure with ease. This will open your business up to creating a flexible workplace where staff can work from different locations of different devices, opening your business up to a range of different opportunities.

Legal businesses are known for having legacy apps, which is why WVDI allows you to manage specialised workloads, including these legacy apps you have. And what’s best is WVDI allows your legal business to stay secure whilst meeting regulations.

 

Talk to an expert

If you want to find out more about how your legal business can adopt Microsoft technologies, then get in contact with our experts. We’d be happy to provide you with a copy of the slides from the event and discuss any of the topics in more detail.