UK Law Firm Stevens & Bolton Go Virtual

Law firm Stevens
& Bolton LLP has a long history in the legal profession and a lengthy
list of clients ranging from household named PLCs and mid-tier businesses to high
net worth private clients.

Located in Guildford, just south of London, the firm delivers
quality advice and knowledge. A number of the firm’s clients are multinational,
based overseas or having international business interests.

Recommended in 24 specialist practice areas by the leading legal directories,
Stevens & Bolton currently maintains a staff of approximately 110 lawyers
and 60 support employees in a variety of administrative and support roles. The
IT department is a five-person team, comprising the department head, three
support staff and a trainer.

Company requires

streamlined infrastructure and efficient IT

Three years ago, Stevens & Bolton’s IT
infrastructure was in need of attention. The hardware on the desktops needed
refreshing and the strategic approach to the server infrastructure needed
review. To lead the project, Stevens & Bolton hired David Thomas as the new
head of its IT department.

David said: "At the time, the systems were in real need
of a refresh, some systems had not been optimally configured and were not being
efficiently utilised. Some of the external suppliers were not working with us
proactively, partly because their advice had not always been followed in the
past. As a result, some weak technology decisions had been made. However, as a
leading law firm, we needed an efficient, robust and reliable technology
infrastructure."

With an existing infrastructure consisting of an HP MSA SAN solution, it was
clear to Thomas that the existing SAN would not scale to the firm’s medium- to
long-term requirements.

"It became evident that there was no
support for high availability without significant investment," said
Thomas. "The HP SAN had a single
controller at the time, which was an unacceptable single point of failure."

Management and migration
of network data simplified
with Dell Compellent
Selecting a solution to Stevens & Bolton’s data storage challenges was
relatively straightforward. Since Thomas was already familiar with the
Compellent Storage Center SAN through colleagues at his previous company, he
arranged a demo with the firm’s storage advisors Atlanta Technology, Ltd.

Two
specific capabilities of the fCompellent SAN made the decision
straightforward for Stevens & Bolton.

The first was the ease of configuring the system through the web
interface.

"Any member of my team can look at
the Dell Compellent Storage SAN web interface and after understanding some of
the basic terminology, easily provision disks and link them to the servers or
virtualized clusters," said Thomas.

The second was automated tiered storage through Compellent Data
Progression software – the ability to use high-speed drives for active data and
to have dormant, little-used data migrated to slower, less
expensive drives.

With the decision to go with Compellent Storage Center SAN, the IT team at
Stevens & Bolton began the process of migrating existing SAN data to the Compellent Storage Center SAN solution, and, at the same time, upgrading
to VMware vSphere 4. The storage migration was straightforward, new virtual
machines were created, attached to the storage center, and data
transferred. Where possible, certain physical servers underwent physical to
virtual conversions.

IT team gains flexibility and control

with virtualized SAN network
Thomas said: "With the Dell
Compellent Storage Center SAN, creating new servers is not just easy, it’s
enjoyable. Before, if we were to build a server over the weekend, we would have
to drive in to the office. Now, we can remotely access the system through a web
browser. We can literally build a server from anywhere in the world, without
having to insert a CD or worry about whether we need to switch the server off
and on in the office."

The combination of Compellent Storage Center SAN and
vSphere 4 server software makes it easy to roll out new
servers to the organisation and perform recovery in the event of a problem.

"We’ve actually had to restore our
Microsoft Exchange databases on two occasions, and successfully recovered
entire mailboxes within minutes as opposed to hours or days," said Thomas.
"The Dell Compellent Storage Center SAN has made our lives easier because
it has allowed us to create virtual servers and assign storage and discrete
sources more easily. It’s a faster, more stable environment to provision
services."

Thomas notes that Compellent Storage Center SAN has enabled
users with average technical knowledge to be empowered to do the kind of tasks
normally outsourced to a third party, saving the firm money.

Thomas said: "At the moment, one of
my helpdesk team members is also effectively fulfilling a
network/administrative role. With little experience of networked storage and
virtualized environments, she can easily provision storage, assign it to the
virtual cluster and build a virtual server or workstation. It’s really just a
fantastic solution."

Company has backup with Dell Compellent Copilot Support
Stevens & Bolton is also pleased with Dell
Compellent Copilot Support. "If
there’s a problem, for example a power outage or similar, we will get a call
from Copilot Support, even out of hours or at the weekend", said Thomas.
"It’s also great because the Copilot team can remotely access the system
from their offices to do any kind of troubleshooting without having to setup a
remote session to grant them access to our system. They’ve helped us with a
number of maintenance tasks, including troubleshooting and firmware updates.
It’s brilliant how they can connect into the system itself without getting
access to any other part of the network."