Pictured above: Nigel Redwood

Telford based managed service specialist e-know.net has announced a further addition to its fast-growing legal client base. Leading south-east practice Tees Solicitors has contracted for the delivery of e-know.net's Managed Desktop solution to its 205 users across five offices.

In addition to the core Microsoft Office and Exchange products, 20 other applications will be moved into the hosted environment, including Lawsoft practice management, DPS case management, DPS Teamtalk digital dictation and Laserforms.

The switch to cloud-based IT services is seen as critical to the firm's future development. Commenting on the move, Paul Stothard, Tees' chief executive officer, said: "Very simply, we want to be able to offer more to clients from more locations while maintaining the highest quality and service levels - that puts the onus squarely on embedding efficiency, process and resilience across the business. We see IT as absolutely pivotal to our strategic ambitions and operational requirements and that's why we had to ask ourselves the question - what was the best option in terms of IT delivery going forward? 

When we compared on-premise and outsourced approaches, the Managed Desktop solution proposed by e-know.net graphically highlighted what we were missing and what we needed to get into the business: enabling technology accessible anytime, anywhere, supported 24/7. On offer was a more comprehensive, secure, cost-effective and reliable IT provision than we could ever hope to achieve ourselves. We now have the cost certainty and operational capability to enable us to respond to new challenges and growth opportunities; and freed of the responsibility to deliver IT services internally we can now focus on driving the business forward and delivering consistently for clients."

Nigel Redwood, e-know.net's managing director, is seeing a clear trend as more and more firms move away from on-premise systems. "What we are hearing repeatedly is that IT is core to the law firm, but it is not their business. They want to be free to concentrate on core competencies and entrust the delivery of a fast, stable and reliable IT service to a specialist third party. The other trend emerging is for far more exacting selection processes. With some cloud providers suffering lengthy outages recently, it's understandable that prospective clients are now making highly detailed assessments of a provider's calibre as regards its infrastructure, resilience and capacity as well as its people and financial strength. We're delighted that in e-know.net Tees saw a hosting partner that ticked the boxes and gave them the confidence to switch to the cloud."