The business context
Norton Rose’s business is heavily IT dependent. It has 1200 staff working out of its City offices supporting round the clock, seven days a week operations. This means it requires constantly available resources plus a secure and robust network. All Norton Rose’s fee earners use a document management system which is linked to email, and they require access to contacts, the corporate knowledge base and billing systems. Although applications are echoed locally on their laptops, lack of access to email and company systems quickly translates into unbooked time, costing the business heavily. Thus Norton Rose’s IT systems are built to support swift disaster recovery and high availability.

Norton Rose considered it essential that its implementation partners not only offered competitive rates but could also demonstrate a track record of delivering complex projects to deadline. “An experienced project manager is vitally important to the success of a project,” comments Norton Rose’s Malcolm Todd, Head of Systems Delivery. “It’s really important to get a good project manager to work with. Redstone Converged Solutions’ experience in project delivery was the key differentiator for us.”

The new infrastructure supports innovative applications
The project involved the deployment of a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure over seven floors of Norton Rose’s new headquarters. The building was flood wired and has 10,000 outlets, creating an infrastructure that it is future proofed for 10-15 years. The installation included a new wireless network and “green” data centre, with the addition of an intelligent infrastructure management (IIM) solution.

When the new data centre went operational in January 2007, Norton Rose’s IT staff were able to decommission the old servers and get the 100 new servers fully operational in around five hours. This was done successfully over a weekend. “We were really pleased at the speed we were able to get everything up and running,” says Malcolm Todd. “I don’t think many companies could switch over in a few hours like that.” However, far from sitting on their laurels, staff are now planning to decrease this time still further with a target of around two to four hours. 

Malcolm Todd and Anthony Salter expect a range of efficiency gains from the new equipment, as well as increased speed and reliability. In particular, Norton Rose has been able to deploy innovative applications and hardware, which will support its collaborative, distributed working style. These include, VoIP, Cisco MeetingPlace, interactive whiteboards, videoconferencing facilities and full-colour touch-screen phones. Integrated messaging applications will support the mobility of its staff: for example, enabling them to receive voicemails to their BlackBerry devices.  The Norton Rose project went largely to plan and Anthony Salter comments that the company was particularly pleased with the attitude of Redstone’s staff. 

The IIM solution is expected to provide a number of benefits in the longer term, including supporting higher quality of service levels provided to the business. It will also help IT staff find and resolve faults more quickly and speed service provisioning. For a risk-averse company such as Norton Rose – for which business continuity is particularly important – the capability to use modelling to plan actions should a fault or disaster occur is particularly valuable.

“The main benefit we’ll get from the new infrastructure is increased IT and organisational efficiency,” says Malcolm Todd. “Firstly, the equipment will be faster and more reliable than the old equipment – which is very important to us – but it will also mean less downtime, faster access to services, and efficiency gains from more collaborative working. Some of the new applications we’re deploying like the videoconferencing, for example, will change and improve our working practices.”

Green issues are important to Norton Rose
Environmental concerns are particularly important to Norton Rose. For example, it has been in discussion with the architects, planners and builders of its new headquarters since 2003 to ensure that its environmental objectives are met. These policies cover issues such as how the building is heated and cooled, optimization of electricity usage and recycling of waste. But environmental objectives were also supported in the deployment and design of its IT infrastructure.

Using the Redstone Converged Solutions Logistics Centre for pre-termination, for example, reduced wastage and allowed any waste generated from the process to be recycled. The new collaborative applications that the company is deploying also have the potential to deliver against environmental and commercial goals. They will reduce the requirement of staff to travel, resulting in carbon savings, reduced costs and, importantly, an increase in the productivity of fee earners. These benefits clearly demonstrate that a positive environmental policy is not only a matter of altruism and social conscience, but can also deliver a wide range of business benefits as well.