With more than 700 case lawyers and practising partners reliant on core IT applications, a successful reconfiguration and relocation of top 20 UK firm Denton Wilde Sapte's IT infrastructure was essential for maintaining both effective client communication and efficient working practices.

The challenge

With disparate IT functions and operations distributed across geographically remote sites, the challenge was not only to relocate and rationalise technology, but also to implement the requisite processes, policies and procedures for the creation of a robust, resilient, manageable and compliant infrastructure. Dentons commissioned a two-phase project consisting of an investigation, then reconfiguration of its entire information and communications technology (ICT) environment.

Dentons' IT director Neil Pamment explains: "We run seven major applications across our IT infrastructure, ranging from email and billing management to secure extranet-based specialist client services. The nature of our business requires that staff have instant access to shared documents at all times, such as case notes and client histories. Any reduction in network and application availability would effectively result in business processes grinding to a halt."

With a strong internal IT team in place, Dentons had specific requirements regarding the personnel and approach needed to deliver the project.

"Working to such a tight deadline, we needed an agile partner, experienced in large-scale ICT project delivery and also able to offer a collaborative approach to provide resource when and where it was most needed," says Pamment.

After researching the marketplace, Dentons selected networked technology specialist Essant for phase one of the project. Phase two was also awarded to the same company, leaving just five months for the completion of the relocation project – a significant challenge for all involved.

The output of the phase one investigation identified and detailed areas in which the current IT infrastructure was unable to meet future requirements for availability, manageability or resilience. The audit showed that more than 70% of server and network assets were approaching end-of-life and that asset management capability was lacking. As in many organisations, keeping up with the advancing business requirements was proving challenging for the IT team.

"Prior to the transformation, it was difficult to deploy new applications with any great degree of confidence – due to both the infrastructure and the fact that knowledge had been lost through changes in personnel. With a corporate drive to provide an increasing number of services through ICT, our capabilities were falling short of our aspirations," explains Pamment.

"A key area of concern was our back-up environment. Our system of performing back-up through manual routines was time-consuming, costly and gave limited and fragmented access to archived documents. Having a requirement to now migrate and rationalise 5.5 terabytes of data, that policy became wholly inadequate."

Phase one highlighted requirements in five key areas:

. a network, server and storage technology upgrade;

. a network, server and storage infrastructure re-design;

. the placement of 1,300 user connections under operational management;

. the addition of a new data centre facility; and

. the recommendation of back-up and archiving strategies.

Building the right team

Given the complexity of the project, a 'virtual programme office' was set up by Essant to introduce programme governance and process controls. This proven framework was instrumental in guiding the project to a successful end.

Concurrently, Dentons assembled an in-house steering committee to ensure that the programme output met the needs of all stakeholders, from both an IT and business perspective.

The resulting programme delivery team consisted of more than 30 highlyskilled individuals from both Essant and Dentons, incorporating engineers, consultants, systems analysts, business analysts, programme managers and support managers. The mixed team enabled Dentons to achieve return from existing skills, while calling on specialist engineering and programme management expertise as needed.

Tangible benefits

Central to the reconfiguration project was the rationalisation of two discrete London-based server environments into a single off-site specialist data centre, incorporating a consolidated server and storage environment, using the latest in storage area network technology.

The resulting outsourced production site and redesigned network is already delivering cost savings and improved data availability. By placing all on-site user connections under operational management, the Dentons team is now able to remain focused on managing and developing core business applications to gain operational efficiencies and make service enhancements.

The disaster recovery for core systems has been transferred to a discrete site, ensuring a resilient environment. Auto-mated back-up provides peace of mind as well as savings in time and money.

Throughout the project, Essant worked with the in-house IT team and steering committee to ensure milestones were reached and objectives were met.

Pamment explains: "Essant special-ists are experienced in all core ICT disciplines and were able to recommend a number of competitive technology alternatives, helping us select a solution to precisely meet our corporate objectives. Their advice and guidance through vendor negotiations enabled us to instantly share their knowledge and vast experience of the marketplace. While Essant did not supply any of the hardware on this occasion, their input in evaluating, sourcing and locating the solution, as well as helping us adopt a formal project culture, was critical to the project's overall success."

The new solution was delivered on time and within budget and is meeting all core requirements stated at the project outset.

Pamment continues: "As a result of the reconfiguration, reliability is substantially improved and total cost of owner-ship (TCO) has been reduced across the solution. The virtual back-up is saving time and money and the improved network performance is helping to increase the availability of shared information and further enhance the quality of our extranet-based client services."

In addition, the project has also provided some supplementary benefits, including;

. a voiceover internet protocol (VOIP) ready network;

. a vastly improved in-house knowledge base;

. full baseline documentation; and

. a comprehensive data archiving strategy.

The greatest benefit for the business, however, is the transformation of an IT infrastructure that was becoming disparate, cumbersome and difficult to manage, to one that is able to deliver the future service offerings of the business.

Pamment concludes: "In addition to having successfully consolidated sites with no disruption to business, we now have a manageable and secure centralised ICT environment, on which we can confidently develop tomorrow's applications."