Legal Extranets as basic case management systems

We are seeing a trend where smaller firms see Legal Extranet systems as a way to track the status of their cases and calendars in a manner which allows them to view this information from the office, from home or while traveling (providing some basic remote connectivity to their data).
It is an interesting use of the technology -- more for remote access than for collaboration. And, it eliminates the need for these smaller firms to have to maintain IT staff with expertise in such systems, the entire function can be outsourced rather than having attorneys having to struggle with maintaining and supporting computer systems, which is clearly not their core compentency.