HotDocs Cloud Services: The beast is “unleashe[d]”
A few days after its release, HotDocs Cloud Services was named product of the week by LTN . In fact, Sean Doherty, technology editor at LTN, went so far as to say that HotDocs had “unleashe[d] a document generation platform.” I especially like Sean’s word choice, conjuring up images of something big and powerful that had formerly been harnessed—a beast of a technology, if you will.
Of course, Cloud Services hadn’t been harnessed so much as it had been in beta testing. Just the same, though, Cloud Services is big in every sense of the word—a big technology with big functionality and big implications. Not only does it benefit law firms that are looking to deploy the industry-leading, document generation technology in a hosted environment (meaning no upfront software costs), but also any organization that wants HotDocs interviews (wizard-like, data-gathering sequences of forms) to be on demand in custom environments, such as the organization’s workflows, web pages, or any standards-compliant web page. Better documents in a fraction of the time and for a fraction of the cost of legacy methods just got easier to deploy.
As for powerful, well, don’t get me started. HotDocs, already the heavyweight champion in terms of power and flexibility among document generation technologies, can now be easily integrated into an organization’s web environments. Let’s say your law firm is in the process of deploying a BPM suite, maybe K2, Agilepoint, or Metastorm. With the release of HotDocs Cloud Services, interviews can easily be plugged into a workflow anywhere they’re needed. Or maybe you’re using Actionstep or another cloud-based case management system, again, HotDocs is available without the need to buy on-premise server software. And your HotDocs process applications (templates), no matter how powerful they may be (lengthy with complex business logic), are available on demand within the context of your favorite applications.
Is HotDocs Cloud Services a beast? Well that depends on your point of view. It’s big and powerful, capable of shouldering a massive workload. If that makes it a beast, then I guess I can live with that description.