Maintaining that network became pretty important. The loss of the client list or current billing status would be crippling. And it's gotten more complex now. There simply isn't any company left without the network. And this trend isn't just from the inside.
Clients too look to network access with the design studio.
They want access to their stored materials as well for review, approval, and retrieval. And there's a whole generation of current and potential ecommerce clients who actually wants to view, select, and purchase content directly from a company's Web site, all without any physical contact with the studio at all. It is no longer possible simply to reconstruct things from hardcopy. There's no hardcopy left. The network has become the core business asset.