Legal Technology Journal

IT director Ian Lauwerys explains how virtualisation has helped set up and integrate a series of new offices into Kennedys existing system in record time, while minimising costs and disruption to the business.

Kennedys was an early adopter of virtualisation and the introduction of a virtualised environment has supported the firm’s expansion strategy and growing international reach by increasing flexibility and facilitating the launch and integration of new offices faster and more cost effectively.

IT director Ian Lauwerys sets the scene. ‘In the legal industry – an industry that places special importance on trust – the need to deliver on promises and meet high expectations is all-important. Giving lawyers round-the-clock access to confidential case notes and business-critical applications from wherever they are working allows the firm to offer a consistent service and meet what are often challenging deadlines.’

As we go to press, Kennedys is in the process of relocating its London headquarters to new offices in Fenchurch Avenue. Virtualisation is a key part of this major project. ‘We took the opportunity of the move to virtualise our core infrastructure into a new data centre,’ explains Lauwerys. ‘All our main applications – our practice management system and most of the document management system (DMS) – are run centrally out of London. There were originally about 40 main servers at our Chiswell Street offices.

‘We now have seven virtual servers running out of an offsite data centre plus three in a separate disaster recovery data centre. Everything is synchronised across the network to support disaster recovery and business continuity capability, so if there are problems at our main data centre we can switch across very quickly.’ Both data centres are offsite – one is in west London and the other is in the East End – so that in the event of a serious outage at any of the firm’s buildings all the data would be recovered from when it last synchronised,’ he adds.

Launching the Sydney office

The centralised infrastructure includes Kennedys’ growing network of international offices. Kennedys’ first major virtualisation project was two years ago, when the firm took on an entire team of four partners and some 20 associates from Australian firm Minter Ellison to launch a new insurance practice in Sydney. Lauwerys and his London-based IT team needed to set up the Sydney office as quickly as possible and integrate its IT services into the firm’s existing network. ‘Once the deal was done, we didn’t have much time to get the system up and running,’ he says.

‘Virtualisation was the perfect solution because it addressed the challenges of distance, time and cost,’ explains Lauwerys. ‘It was critical to ensure that everyone working out of the new office could access technical support straight away. However, transporting several new servers from the UK to Australia and flying out IT staff to set up the system would have been incredibly expensive.’ Kennedys’ UK-centric system means that all its expert technologists are in the UK – so virtualisation was clearly the best option.‘It enabled us to build the entire system in the UK, test it, ship it over to Australia on a few back-up tapes and get a local supplier to install it without requiring them to understand how the applications worked,’ explains Lauwerys. ‘We knew the quality of the system was exactly right because we had built it ourselves.’

Two years ago, virtualisation was at the cutting edge of legal technology. What made Lauwerys consider it as a solution? ‘We were already trialling it,’ he explains. ‘We had tested it in London on a small, upgrade project and it had lived up to our expectations. But although it was increasingly being used in big business, law firms had not done much in the way of virtualisation. At Kennedys we have adopted a fairly bold approach and we needed to find a solution quickly. Having used the technology on small, stand-alone projects, we felt that it was time to take a leap of faith.’

Lauwerys selected virtualisation specialist Intercept as a technology partner on the basis of their longstanding relationship with the firm. ‘Intercept were early providers of virtualisation technology,’ he says. ‘They were initially brought in to do a Citrix project for us. Kennedys was one of their first customers and we have worked together for a number of years. When I joined the firm three years ago, I already knew some of the people from Intercept. Intercept saw virtualisation as the next big thing. We were looking into virtualisation so it was a natural choice for us to work together.’

The technology

Intercept recommended VMware ESX for a scalable, easy-tomanage server farm, creating a virtual server environment that removed the need for physical servers. The project involved installing a number of applications in a UK test lab. Kennedys IT team were then able to test the entire suite of integrated systems. An image of each server was then copied to tape and couriered to Australia. Installing these virtual servers onto the new system in Sydney simply involved transferring files to hardware prepared locally. Virtualisation technology reduced the cost of the project significantly by eliminating transportation costs and the need to employ people with specialist skills and expertise in Sydney.

The virtualisation roll out

Saving energy and costs

Building on the success of Sydney, Lauwerys decided to roll out virtualisation to the rest of the firm. ‘We were at the planning stage for the relocation of our London office and we recognised that virtualisation represented an opportunity to save significant costs,’ he explains. ‘We looked at the amount of floor space required to build a data centre in the new office. In the heart of the City, floor space is extremely expensive, so it made economic sense to use an external data centre. In terms of facilities, power generation and air conditioning, purpose-built data centres offer a higher standard of engineering and greater resilience.’ Lauwerys explains that external data centres also charge by floor space and, more importantly, by the cost of the power used. This provided an additional cost justification for virtualisation. ‘The cost of cooling drives up data centre costs and during the 12-month planning period prior to virtualisation, our data centre costs doubled, purely due to rising fuel prices. So it was critical to minimise the amount of power – and floor space – we used and, of course, virtualisation offers the opportunity to achieve that.’

Reducing the number of servers from 40 to ten has reduced costs dramatically. Lauwerys reiterates that although virtualisation has enabled Kennedys to save a large amount of space, the main benefit is in terms of energy saving. It also supports the firm’s corporate social responsibility strategy in terms of considering the environment when setting up new offices.

Virtualising servers and data storage

Kennedys continues to work with Intercept. ‘We have just completed a major project involving server virtualisation and disk storage virtualisation, which applies a similar concept,’ says Lauwerys. ‘We still have physical sets of disks, but instead of managing them directly and linking them into the servers, an additional layer of software that runs on a separate server takes care of partitioning up and serving out the disk.’ This offers a number of advantages, mostly in terms of data management. For replicating the data between the data centres, Lauwerys has introduced a product called FalconStor which replicates Exchange, SQL databases and all the file data at the storage level. ‘Our current system uses complicated software that interfaces with all the various applications to copy data from one data centre to the other,’ he explains. ‘FalconStor simplifies the process: you just identify the pieces of disk that you want to replicate to another site. It also has agents that understand SQL server databases and Exchange e-mail systems so that when you snapshot the data across all the sites it remains transactionally consistent – in other words, the data is in its original form and format, and ready to use.’

Building in extra capacity

This year has seen Kennedys’ continued expansion both in the UK and overseas with new offices in Singapore and Manchester. The Manchester office relocation took place at the same time as the London office move. In September, Kennedys is merging with insurance boutique Davies Lavery, so additional offices in Maidstone and Birmingham will need to be incorporated into the system. Lauwerys explains that after a few months of consolidation all the firm’s offices will be run on the same virtualised model. ‘The current VMWare environment has enough spare capacity to run quite a lot of new servers and applications,’ he says. ‘So it will simply be a matter of adding new offices’ existing servers to our virtualised environment.’

As at July 2008, the roll out is almost complete. ‘Although we have used a number of physical-to-virtual products that automate the transfer process, it is still a long haul and we have been transitioning files every weekend for the past couple of months,’ says Lauwerys. ‘It can be stressful as we don’t know what the performance will be like until the system is up and running. The risk is minimal when transferring databases, however, as if something does not work, it is simply a matter of switching back to the physical server, so no data is lost. E-mail is more challenging as once e-mail is delivered to a new system you can not easily switch back. So it is important to test everything and, of course, virtualisation takes a lot of risk out of any migration upgrade testing process. The results, to date, are very gratifying,’ he adds.

Dispensing with the white-van man

Virtualisation has reduced the stress of moving servers between offices and data centres. ‘It is a lot easier than the traditional approach, which involved picking up boxes and moving them between offices in the back of a van,’ says Lauwerys. ‘There is always the risk that something might fall off the van or, when you get there, you can not get it running in the same way. So we have tried – and in most cases succeeded – in eliminating that risk.’

A new document management system

After the relocations of Kennedys’ London and Manchester offices, Lauwerys is focusing on upgrading the DMS. Kennedys currently operates a bespoke web-based and SQL server-based DMS. Although this is capable of supporting the firm’s existing requirements, as the firm continues to expand both in terms of size and geographical spread, it will benefit from a more robust, scalable system. Lauwerys is currently working with Tikit to develop a semi-bespoke integrated system based on Interwoven’s WorkSite and Metastorm’s business process management applications.

The first step will be to implement WorkSite at all Kennedys’ UK offices and in Hong Kong and Sydney, enabling e-mail correspondence and other documents to be stored in a single searchable location. The new DMS will combine off-the-shelf, semi-packaged and bespoke applications designed to ensure that it fits Kennedys’ specific requirements and to make life easier for fee-earners and secretaries. One example is Tikit’s Matter Management Solution which will be incorporated into WorkSite. It allows users to access data from all the firm’s systems – including its practice management and client relationship management systems – and start working on a client case from a central and single user interface. It also provides a platform to track, manage and analyse legal work and costs.

Under Kennedys’ existing DMS, each local office has a file server to store documents. ‘Our documents tend to be quite large and transferring them over a wide area network tends to be slow, but everything else – e-mail, databases and the other applications – is stored in London,’ explains Lauwerys. The new Interwoven DMS includes document-caching systems which enable all documents to be stored centrally and additional copies to be stored locally to allow high-speed access. Improving efficiency

Tikit’s Template Management System (TMS) and Printer Control Centre (PCC) were also implemented as part of the office move. TMS is a centralised tool for creating and managing document templates. PCC gives the IT team control over printer functionality. Its single, intuitive front end removes complexity from printing tasks for users, while its centralised control infrastructure allows IT staff to monitor, manage and administer printer settings across a firm.

Supporting high performance

Lauwerys’ strategy has focused on ensuring that system performance is not compromised by latency issues due to the geographical spread of Kennedys’ offices. ‘Our overseas offices, depending on their size, have some infrastructure installed locally,’ he explains. ‘For example, VMWare allows our Sydney office to use a time-recording database that is part of the local practice management system. They have their own e-mail server and local copies of the current document management and case management system. Hong Kong runs a similar system, but it’s not yet virtualised. Smaller offices have a file and print server, and possibly an e-mail server, but most of the central applications are run over Citrix from London. This enables smaller offices to access all the firm’s documents and benefit from being part of a global network.’ It also offers increased flexibility. ‘For example, our Dubai office was launched by one lawyer with a laptop. The fact that he could access all our systems over Citrix meant that he could start working before we even had an office,’ adds Lauwerys.

Addressing three key challenges

Lauwerys believes that the success of Kennedys’ virtualisation project depended on rising to three key challenges:

• anticipating future requirements in terms of extra capacity;
• managing and co-ordinating the different groups involved indeveloping and delivering the project; and, most importantly,
• ensuring that the end result would meet and exceed the needs of the user population and support the firm’s strategy going forward.

Planning ahead

Recent developments at Kennedys made it clear that future expansion had to be considered when planning the firm’s IT infrastructure and deciding how much capacity was needed. ‘We had to make sure we got the requirements right,’ explains Lauwerys. ‘This is quite challenging and there are tools that help you do it, but ultimately you have to build in enough spare capacity to deal with anticipated requirements and the unexpected. You also have to consider that you may need to expand the system fairly quickly. For example, we knew that we were likely to need more disk storage capacity, so we built in the ability to add more storage at a later stage without dismantling the entire system.’

Network communications are another key consideration. Lauwerys emphasises the importance of planning as, in his experience, getting lines installed to new sites tends to take longer than anticipated. ‘It is worth placing orders 12 months in advance, given how long this can take,’ he says.

Lauwerys’ consultancy experience, particularly in dealing with the tender process, proved invaluable in planning and managing the virtualisation project, which coincided with several office launches and the relocation of the firm’s London headquarters. ‘We spent 12 months talking to various providers to ensure that we understood all the options. We then put out tenders 12 months before the move,’ he says. ‘However thorough the planning process – which in our case took the best part of two years – it is generally impossible to find a product that exactly matches what you’re looking for, so ultimately you have to take a leap of faith. In the end it comes down to finding suppliers that are committed to resolving your issues.’

Lauwerys believes that Kennedys has just such a partner in Intercept. ‘They have a good interaction with us and genuinely understand what we want to achieve, so when things don’t work the way they should – which is sometimes inevitable – we feel confident that they are on our side,’ he adds.

Another challenge arose from the fact that Kennedys was one of the first law firms to adopt virtualisation technology. ‘Some application vendors were cagey about whether their products would support virtualisation,’ observes Lauwerys. ‘Or they took the view that if it didn’t work, it was our problem rather than theirs.’ He adds that as more firms switch to a virtual environment, suppliers will have to get the message and make sure their products are compatible with the technology.

As a trail blazer for virtualisation, Lauwerys is regularly contacted by other firms that are considering going down the same route. ‘Legal IT is different from many industries as people are willing to share experiences, best practices and problems,’ he says.

Project management

It was equally important to work closely with the different vendors involved in the various parts of this huge project, which included Hitachi, FalconStor, VMWare, HP and Microsoft. ‘It can be a challenge to organise them all in such a way that they are all on the same page at the same time,’ says Lauwerys. ‘I recall several occasions when we had to go back to the drawing board and start all over again because someone had not understood what someone else was trying to achieve. Therefore, it is crucial to allow enough time to build a proof of concept and make sure it’s working. Then if something isn’t working, you still have time to fix it. That’s one lesson we learnt.’

Responding to the business

Lauwerys’ commitment to virtualisation has been a triumph. Unlike many firms, which have virtualised 60% or 70% of their infrastructure, Kennedys has gone considerably further. ‘Only a few core elements remain physical,’ he says. ‘For example, some parts of the technical infrastructure, like Citrix, cannot be virtualised because, in effect, they are already virtual servers. It is also crucial to keep some of the main controllers physical because if you lose your virtual infrastructure you can not recover without the main controllers. Other than that we have achieved our objective of virtualising everything.’

Kennedys is clearly reaping the benefits of virtualisation which underpins its flexibility and responsiveness to clients and to the market. ‘Partners regularly have very tight deadlines and face real challenges in terms of setting up new offices and launching into new practice areas, and we do not want technology to hold them up,’ says Lauwerys. ‘The fact that the IT team has completed several really huge projects in just a few months shows that we are responding to their needs by providing the appropriate technology to meet their requirements and deliver on their strategy.’

Next steps: an international IT team

The Davies Lavery merger should bring Kennedys into the top50 UK law firms. After completing the virtualisation roll-out and the two office relocations, Lauwerys and his team plan to focus their efforts on the DMS upgrade, which will pilot in early 2009, while continuing to support the firm’s international offices from London. The latter can be challenging because of the significant time differences between Kennedys’ offices. ‘We are looking to increase our international IT support so that we have to deal with fewer 3am phone calls,’ he says. ‘We have worked through local suppliers for many years, but we have now reached the point at which we need an international IT team.’

The IT team currently comprises some 25 people, and will increase to 30 following the Davies Lavery merger. The fact that they are all based in London has not been an issue hitherto, but the new virtualised and centralised infrastructure will inevitably mean that the firm’s international offices will become more reliant on the central IT team for support. In anticipation of this increased demand, Lauwerys is planning to beef up the team’s international presence.

Meanwhile, Kennedys’ hard-working team continues to deliver. ‘The technology guys are still working every weekend, but after the relocation things will return to normal,’ says Lauwerys. ‘Fortunately, I have a top team who enjoy doing a good job. It is a challenge and in the past few months I do not think I have ever had so many projects to complete! However, by the end of the year we will have achieved a fantastic amount and we will be able to look back with satisfaction on a job well done.’

Ian Lauwerys is IT director at Kennedys.