Moving is Hard
Anyone who has moved to a new house or apartment will know the stress of the process. The large items to carefully transfer and the many small details to consider make moving a hefty undertaking. Earlier this year, a mid-sized law firm was facing this daunting task as it planned to move to a new office in Manhattan.
Working closely with Kraft Kennedy, Phillips Nizer not only made the move from 666 Fifth Avenue to 485 Lexington Avenue without losing a minute of connectivity to its clients, but also took the opportunity to upgrade its technology and go paperless for a modern, efficient new office.
Going Paperless
During the move, two floors, a large basement, and copy center were consolidated into one floor.
Under the leadership of longtime IT Director Diane Danglovich, the firm embarked on a large project to reduce storage, scanning about one thousand Bankers boxes. To promote a paperless future, the firm purchased multi-function scanning devices for each desk. Kraft Kennedy supported the new desktop and printer design, putting “their whole heart and soul into it,” according to Ms. Danglovich. The initiative has significantly reduced the firm’s paper footprint and need for real estate.
Newly Robust Disaster Recovery
Kraft Kennedy and Phillips Nizer accomplished the move alongside a thorough infrastructure upgrade and off-premises data center implementation.
Kraft Kennedy’s infrastructure experts completed the cutover from 666 Fifth Avenue to the IO data center prior to the move to ensure that attorneys would have full access to email and documents on their first day in the new office.
“We had hard and fast deadlines and we met all of them,” said Jeff Silverman, Practice Architect for Kraft Kennedy’s Virtualization and Infrastructure group. “I think that’s part of the value that Kraft Kennedy brings to the table – that we’ve helped many firms successfully execute similar projects at scale. That experience helped us plan this project accurately and minimize surprises. Our broad, deep bench of technical talent helps as well – we can leverage the strength of our teams, and if necessary our vendor relationships, to ensure that various technical and operational tasks stay on track.”
The bench did indeed come into to play as Solution Architect Eric Christiansen, of Kraft Kennedy’s Managed Services group, worked “tirelessly” during the cutover, according to Ms. Danglovich, keeping her up-to-date “in the wee hours of the morning and on weekends.”
Using Datto (read our review of the solution here), Phillips Nizer is now backing up data to the cloud for cost-effective disaster recovery that allows near real-time replication, allowing the firm to achieve RPO and RTO metrics close to zero.
“By utilizing redundant power supplies, redundant switches, and also redundant internet providers, we have taken resiliency and DR to a much higher level,” said Ms. Danglovich.
An Exchange Upgrade in Record Time
To upgrade the firm from Exchange 2010 to Exchange 2016, Kraft Kennedy’s Infrastructure and Enterprise Systems engineer John Suchan migrated 170 mailboxes in less than a week.
“John Suchan migrated the Exchange data in record time,” said Ms. Danglovich. “Terabytes in days. I was blown away by Jeff’s network design and John’s skill level in migrating the data. I was nervous—this is the biggest part of our business—but they made it seem so easy.
In addition to Exchange, Citrix and SQL were upgraded, and Duo multi-factor authentication was implemented for tighter security.
“The design of the new infrastructure is absolutely perfect,” said Ms. Danglovich.
The Day Of
On Friday evening, Phillips Nizer shut off its computers for the day and systems were seamlessly switched over to the colocation. Kraft Kennedy had already been replicating data to it for a month, allowing the firm to immediately pick up work on Monday.
It was difficult to juggle the scanning project with designing and building the new infrastructure, phone system, and coordinating all vendor services, but the firm managed “perfect timing,” according to Ms. Danglovich.
“We didn’t miss one call or email,” she said.
Kraft Kennedy’s Managed Services team was there to provide floor support on move Monday but there were no issues to contend with aside from the odd printer setup.
“There were no panic moments or crisis mode,” said Ms. Danglovich. “Kraft Kennedy had us on their radar. We heard from every person on the team, checking in and giving status updates. It really kept us informed and calm.”
Speak with us about how to give your firm a peace of mind while going through infrastructure upgrades.