Microsoft In Autonomy Takeover Rumour

This piece came out around four days ago here concerning rumours that Microsoft could be ready to make a bid for Autonomy at around 2,800p a share. This would value Autonomy at approximately £6.7 billion (75% above its current share price of 1,513p a share and with a market capitalisation of £3.9 billion). Autonomy's share price jumped between 3.5% and 5% in value on Friday morning trading after Reuters reported the news here.

Reuters also reported that both Microsoft and Autonomy were not immediately available for comment. Further analysis here from the Guardian.

The impact of such a move would be massive not just for Microsoft and Autonomy, but also obviously for the iManage product's future and the law firm Document Management space?

Stand by for more.

Friday Cocktail Leadership - Monkeys & Squirrels

Yep...it has been a long long time. Have you missed the Friday Cocktail Leadership postings from your dear old pals at JD? You have? You really have? Awww, that is swell....well we've missed posting them too!

With prompting from Simon and others, we're back to give you an escape from work on Friday with mindless drivel. Speaking of Simon, did you know that the flying monkey's name in the Wizard of Oz (Pricey's favourite film...) is Nikko?

Don't know how it happened, but this week's posting is all about monkeys and squirrels (not the secret kind though).

This week we say a Drunken Monkey hello to Barr, Jabba, Correll, Alpha Bob and Pricey for last week's catch up. We also say a great big Art Club hello to Daffyd, the Swede and Peggy, and "budem zdorovy" to the Russian Princess. Also thanks for breakfast to Jerome, Jim, Don and Rajitha - too much coffee for Janders for a Friday morning. Thanks to Mel for the G+T, and to CC for the hilarity of this week's ranting....and it is Bleasdale's birthday. Happy Birthday Champ.

The word for today is 'grangerize'....why not. Our book of the day is "Monkey Business", although we're not reading it, we're just watching "sparkles" read it.

That's it for today kids - nothing much else to leave you with except to say "riddle me ree" and what a cheeky squirrel this is!

Oh...by the way...we hope that you are aware that the Innocent Big Knit is back on for 2009.

We're getting our needles clicking - are you?

Janders Dean Personas - ouRSpace Portal Press Roundup

Many thanks to the team at ReedSmith and XMLaw for the mention of Janders Dean and our leading user behaviour and persona development work on the recent ouRSpace project which helped the team land the prestigious SharePoint Innovator of the Year Award. Caselines also has a roundup of the ILTA session with the mention of the user itnerviews and personas. Full press release here with more on the official ReedSmith website here.

Partner Says to CIO "I want one of those..."

Here is one for the geeks and show offs.

After our posting on Microsoft's Surface Touchscreen Technology, another piece has just surfaced after a leak from within Microsoft regarding their tablet technology which is officially within the "late prototype" stage of development. See the full story and leaked photos here.

SharePoint 2010 - Three Wise Men

A few sneak peeks at Microsoft SharePoint 2010 enhancements have been doing the rounds since July, with this site showing three videos from the perspective of the three wise men at Microsoft.

The majority of new information on 2010 will be held back by the team at Microsoft until the SharePoint Conference which is to be held in Las Vegas in October (19th-22nd).

Those currently playing with MOSS 2007 should expect (and be warned) about new terminology which will come with the 2010 stack. Those who get sent the sales materials should expect an updated version of the 2007 SharePoint Wheel.

Let's get excited by the fact that terms such as Sites, Communities, Content, Insights, and Composites will replace the existing 2007 wheel's terms of Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Portal, Search, Content Management, and Business Forms - with "Search" being the only area on the 2010 wheel that remains from the 2007 version.

Craig Roth has a great review of the videos and his take on the best enhancements here which is well worth a read.

Information Risk Management (IRM) Software

For those who are looking into Information Risk Management (IRM) software, Recommind have just had their Axcelerate eDiscovery tool named one of the Trend Setting Products of the year by KMWorld Magazine.

For those of you who are not looking into Information Risk Management (IRM) software...why not?

Adding Value to iManage - SmartSpace

There are obviously still some old school innovation juices flowing somewhere under the covers at Baker Robbins.

Once early pioneers and innovators in the iManage/Interwoven add-on space (particularly when the Interwoven application was taking the market by storm) the team at BRCo have been relatively quiet on the DMS differentiation front since the migration of DocsOpen firms slowed down, and since joining the Thomson Reuters stables.

However, there is still some smarts in their space.

Ladies and gentlemen....meet SmartSpace.

From the demo and information available, SmartSpace appears to be a nice add-on which has been quietly played with by some early adopters since June of this year and dipping its toe just ever so slightly into the wider Legal Technology world via demonstrations to a selected few at the recent ILTA conference.

SmartSpace provides a unique solution to a classic "white space" problem by adding an integrated matter centric collaboration area automatically on matter inception to the top level of the matter workspace folder tree.

...let's use the term "collaboration area" rather than "wiki" so as to not scare too many people off. Even we've been convinced that "wiki" is just soooo "Steve Jobs Pre-Liver Transplant"...

We say bravo to the old BRCo crew for SmartSpace, and encourage existing iManage users with responsibility for IT and/or KM to at least take a look at the way in which this works - particularly if you have practice areas or matter teams who are looking for specific ways to improve their collaboration and knowledge sharing, and/or those who have yet to build a fully integrated knowledge repository or collaboration application.

We're not sure of the pricing structure for the add-on, or the implementation effort, but it is worth the review just to see how innovation should still be expected in our industry - and to see how some people are still embracing the approach of seeking ways to "squeeze more out of what we already have".

A posting of possible improvement ideas for SmartSpace is covered here in Caselines.

It will be interesting to see if and when the Autonomy iManage team offer such functionality as standard out of the box, and/or if and when the internal IT teams develop and share an easy way to integrate their own MS SharePoint pages in this manner. Irrespective, at least someone is still thinking...

LawTech Summit Awards

Further to the previous posting, the full list of major awards from the recent APAC LawTech Summit are as follows:

* Best Practice in Knowledge Management - Gilbert & Tobin
* Security & Risk Management - Arnold Bloch Liebler
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Small/Medium Firm) - Minter Ellison SA/NT
* Legal IT Team of the Year (Large Firm) - Corrs Chambers Westgarth
* Most Innovative In-House Technology Project - Sparke Helmore

Janders Dean says a big congratulations to all the winning teams and also to those who were short listed and nominated in each category. Thanks also should go to the Chilli Marketing team for their continued support of the industry.

LawTech Summit Awards

We say a great big congratulations to our client firms Gilbert+Tobin and Sparke Helmore for their team wins at this evening's annual Lawtech Summit Awards in Coolum Australia. More information on their specific categories, projects, and other award winners when the hangovers fade...

Drag & Drop Emails Into MS SharePoint

We've been asked time and time again for advice and recommendations around technology which allows for easy and intuitive drag and drop of emails directly from a user's Outlook Inbox to a SharePoint Intranet or Document Management environment.

Ta da!

This is one of the best add ins to SharePoint we've seen in a while, and the seamless integration of the application with Outlook will make developers, designers, users and adoption/change management project personnel all very happy.

Colligo synchronises SharePoint document libraries to a user's email folders and content can be made available online only or cached for offline access. Emails and attachments can be moved or copied by the user with a simple and intuitive drag and drop or by setting Outlook rules. The add in captures standard message fields, synchronizing them to SharePoint and custom metadata can be instantly applied.

We think that this is groovy stuff peoples and we say 'bravo' to them - and bravo to James from the Detica team for also finding this and chatting through some of the possibilities of it. It certainly makes for an easy win - just beware that it may be temporary if SharePoint 2010 features and functionality provide this eventually out of the box - but for the Colligo price, we're recommending that it is a sensible approach, even if temporary.

If you're developing your document management related applications or Intranet sites using SharePoint, then you'll want to look at something like this to keep your users happy and increase general adoption.

You're welcome.

Stuart Barr Joins HighQ

Congratulations go to Ajay and the HighQ Solutions team (innovation leaders in law firm dealroom and extranet solutions) in London for their recent appointment of Stuart Barr as a director.

Those who know Stuart know that this is an excellent appointment, and that it is also evidence that HighQ is continuing its focus and commitment to the law firm space.

HighQ gain a new star given that Stuart has over 12 years of experience in web and e-business development, strategy and management and was previously head of operations at Headshift during their golden years. Prior to this, Barr was the Online Services Manager at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, where he was responsible for the firm's various online activities.

The HighQ team celebrated their continued growth and success recently with the BLT (Banking Legal Technology) Portal client event, with Barr's appointment being toasted by industry friends and family. Read about the BLT Portal here.

Read about HighQ's work with Clifford Chance, Freshfields and others here.

Headshift Shifts New Heads

Early decade social media visionaries to the law firm knowledge management and collaboration space - Headshift - have been acquired by the Dachis Group.

Founded in 2008 by Jeffrey Dachis, Dachis Group was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice, and technology implementation program. The company’s strategy is backed by a commitment from Austin Ventures to build and grow organically and through acquisitions.

Jeffrey Dachis has been a major player in the digital services industry as the co-founder of Razorfish which grew into one of the world's largest digital solutions providers with 2,500 employees in 15 offices across 9 countries with annual revenue of over USD$280 million prior to being acquired by Microsoft.

The news was broken by the original Headshift founders in an email to friends, family, prospects and clients late last night UK time and also in a nice spin blog posting today.

Lee and Livio stated in their email that "We are ready to move beyond the experimental phase to create real business transformation. Leaving behind the niche world of enterprise 2.0, we want to work with businesses at a senior level to run change programmes aimed at bringing their processes, internal IT and communications into the Twenty-First Century".

We wish the remaining team all the very best on this next phase, and our fingers are crossed that this injection will keep the brand pushing through barriers.

Continued Success for LexisNexis Visualfiles Australia

LexisNexis Visualfiles today announced a massive win for their case management solution with news that the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) in Queensland Australia has successfully launched the product suite across 250 decentralised users.

The Australian market has proved very successful for LexisNexis over the past two years in the area of case and matter management (both for government and corporate), and we believe that continued successes will follow with the team that is now in place there.

The ODPP has an annual case load of over 12,000, and selected the Visualfiles solution based on a number of factors which significantly included a review of the product's ongoing success at the Queensland Crown Law Department.

TJ Viljoen (the new CEO of LexisNexis Australia) states in the press release that, "In today’s financial climate, automation is vital to ensure agility in a fast paced, and constantly evolving business environment. Lexis Visualfiles is designed to streamline working practices by providing access to all of your file management tools within an easy-to-use interface.”

Note the use of the word "streamline" and watch this space for the upcoming formal launch of the next generation in Visualfiles' evolution.

Full press release can be found here.

Litigation Readiness and Legal Hold

Janders Dean have featured in an article released today in CDR News Magazine (Commercial Dispute Resolution) discussing critical risk management issues around litigation readiness, legal hold process management for global in-house counsel groups, and the use of enabling technologies.

The full article can be found here.