Case Study: Michelmores

Sector:
Legal

Business Objective:
Protect Your Business
Be more flexible and agile

A replacement MPLS network was installed, linking their three sites to the new disaster recovery site in Bristol.

The customer

Michelmores Solicitors is a leading law firm with offices in Exeter, London and Sidmouth. The company provides legal advice across a range of practice areas and sectors.

Michelmores is a forward thinking organisation which recognises the value IT can bring to a law firm. Employees need constant and uninterrupted access to the IT systems which contain the critical information needed to deliver the level of service expected by their clients.

Quick facts

Voted ‘UK Regional Law Firm of the Year’ at the 2009 British Legal Awards
Benefited from a 260% increase in bandwidth.

Business needs

Michelmores’ decision to look for a new communications provider was originally due to its need for greater network bandwidth and costs were becoming prohibitive within the existing contract.

However, after starting to work with Kcom it soon became clear that additional business issues related to the network could be addressed at the same time. Michelmores recognised an opportunity to update and improve its disaster recovery solution, to safeguard the growth of its critical client information.

The original disaster recovery solution, while robust, was not economical to scale with the growing needs of the firm. It was managed by two separate providers, resulting in a disjointed service. Kcom offered a hosted disaster recovery location coupled with a network upgrade, which gave Michelmores a single supplier, simplified service and reduced costs.

Updated disaster recovery

A replacement MPLS network was installed, linking their three sites to the new disaster recovery site in Bristol.Michelmores benefited from a 260% increase in bandwidth, an essential requirement considering the growing number of applications and systems being used at the firm’s London and Sidmouth sites. It is a highly flexible and scalable network, ‘future proofed’ to accommodate more bandwidth when needed further down the line. Their production systems and services have remained in Exeter with a private network joining them to Kcom’s Bristol co-location site along with a second redundant link. Critical systems are replicated in real time, ensuring the rapid availability of data. Reduced log in time and the improved speed of centrally hosted applications have contributed to enhance employee productivity.

In the event of a major disaster, Michelmores can now be assured that the time taken to get the systems up and running will be significantly reduced. Recovery of data and applications has been cut to just hours or in some cases seconds. This is vital for a company which relies on the availability of its information and IT applications.

Systems have also been put in place so that the technical team has greater visibility of the network. “Kcom’s network reporting tool is the best I have seen” said Simon Clarke. “My team have complete visibility of the network so if anything goes wrong, it can be rectified in the shortest possible time, causing minimal disturbance to employees and consequently clients”.

Set for the future

The upgraded network offers benefits today… and tomorrow. Systems such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), knowledge portals and videoconferencing are faster and can be utilised by larger numbers of staff to enable Michelmores to grow and flex for the future.

“The new systems Kcom has put in place are such an improvement” said Simon Clarke. “I have the confidence that the network can handle our future growth plans. What’s more, I now have the confidence that if anything does go wrong, it can be rectified without impacting us or our clients”.

Michelmores is also introducing a new CRM system to assist staff in delivering even better customer service.

What they say…

“We chose Kcom to take over the management of our network due to cost and they were the only provider that could deliver a solution that was tailored to our needs.”