Law Times

PAGE 10 FOCUS November 30, 2009 • Law Times FMC seeks cost savings through consolidation Businesses turning to centralized servers BY I. JOHN HARVEY For Law Times other tool, is a physical thing. It's expensive to acquire, install, and maintain. Like a car, it consumes energy, pollutes, and reaches an end-of-life cycle sooner than we'd often like. Also, as with a car, it sometimes costs us more to park in a premium spot. Law firms, like most busi- I nesses, are not in the business of information technology. Servers, networks, and routers are com- ponents they need but don't al- ways fully understand. Still, they are comforted by the reality that they are close at hand. So it seems counterintui- tive for information technology staff to approach the managing partners to suggest that doing away with most of the servers and moving them off-site to be t's no secret that a large law practice runs on technology. But technology, like any run by a third party is a better business practice. Even more so, within the context of a law prac- tice, such a move appears almost heretical given the concerns over confidentiality and security. But that's just what has been happening at the 170-year-old firm of Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP over the last couple of years. With the growth of the firm to more than 500 lawyers at six of- fices across the country, it needed to find economies of scale on the support side, including from de- partments such as information technology and marketing. "We had grown to become national in scope but very much local in structure and ac- tions in terms of IT," says Scott Saundry, FMC's chief tech- nology officer who is based in Calgary. "It was pretty easy to see where there could be some significant cost savings." The switch cut the number of servers to 40 from 250 with a 'It was pretty easy to see where there could be some signifi- cant cost savings,' says Scott Saundry. boost in network speeds achieved by some software tweaking from network giant Cisco Sys- tems but not actually requiring new cabling. The overall effect was to cut overhead in terms of both real estate costs and energy consumption while also enabling the redeployment of resources pre- viously dedicated to running and maintaining the servers. FMC is also moving to create a private "cloud" from which authorized users can pull up applications and documents securely from any- where they have Internet access. The move came about be- cause, like all businesses in the economic downturn, FMC was under pressure to cut costs and find efficiencies. One of its strat- egies, then, was to move to a central service model. "Instead of six help desks, we have one central model," says Saundry. "And instead of six big server rooms, we have a national facility which we've contracted out to a third party, though we se- lected and bought the hardware, and they run and maintain it." The shift is both physical and virtual and required a mindset adjustment, he says. "Within the IT department itself, the question became, 'If they don't need servers on-site, why do they need me?'" he says. "And others would ask, 'But how can I maintain and run the serv- ers if I can't touch them?'" His response was to point to the trend in all businesses, large and small. Outsourcing technol- ogy needs, especially the large- scale servers that manage e-mail, phone lines, videoconferencing, and BlackBerry mail in addition to housing documents and soft- ware applications, has become a rapidly growing phenomenon. For one, it allows a business to focus on its core function and offload the worries around its technology operations to a spe- cialist. Second, it allows firms to upgrade those servers into more compact, energy efficient, and modern units. Lastly, and per- haps most dramatically, it frees up valuable real estate. Since most big law firms want to locate at prestigious downtown addresses, floor space comes at a premium cost. "Imagine freeing up the space you have for your server room and instead of an expense for heating and cooling, you could generate billable hours," says Saundry. Pushing the servers off-site to a location where land is much cheaper also allows for other benefits, such as economies of scale with a third party. In FMC's case, Q9 Networks Inc. is one of the leading hosted services providers in Canada. By locating FMC's hardware in its facility with other clients, it can provide hands-on expertise to run and maintain the machinery at a cost efficiency FMC could likely never match. Hardware built in the last five years or more recently is also much more energy efficient than servers that are now 10 years old. This is important not only in terms of the energy they con- sume but more pointedly in the heat they generate that requires cooling server rooms with high- powered air conditioners. They in turn suck huge amounts of power from the grid. In fact, many businesses find Major amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure will come into effect January 1, 2010. That's why we've created Ontario Annual Practice 2010 Interim Edition, which consolidates the amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure and provides expert author commentary and practical advice on what the new rules mean and how they will apply. As a bonus, you'll also receive Ontario Annual Practice, 2010-2011 Edition for FREE in June (the regular publication date) when you purchase this special Edition. 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Prices subject to change without notice, to applicable taxes and shipping & handling. canadalawbook.ca LT1130 www.lawtimesnews.com Carthy_OAP Interim (LT 1-2x4).indd 1 11/25/09 3:29:08 PM themselves outsourcing to meet growth demands because there's simply no way to get more servers, more power, and more cooling capacity into their exist- ing real estate. The added bonus is that consolidation, along with tricks like virtualization, dramatically reduces a business' carbon foot- print and invokes some modest boasting rights. At the managing partner level, Saundry's presentation fo- cused on the cost benefits and efficiencies of moving forward. The concept got the green light with only one caveat. "They said they couldn't have any degradation in service, and that's understandable," says Saundry. "The young lawyers coming in today rely on technol- ogy and they expect it all to work with no issues." LT

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