ManageEngine underpins Bond Pearce’s technology transformation

ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, says that NetFlow Analyzer, its premier network traffic monitoring tool, is being used by Bond Pearce LLP, a leading UK commercial law firm, to underpin an organisation-wide move to unified communications and the virtualisation of its server estate. The delivery of the virtualised environment has generated maintenance cost savings of 80%. With Bond Pearce currently in the process of a merger which will see the company double in size, NetFlow Analyzer will also guarantee the performance of essential IT applications and services as two networks are integrated.

Mike Godsave, Bond Pearce’s infrastructure analyst, said “At Bond Pearce, we are firmly convinced of IT’s role in delivering competitive advantage and pride ourselves in exploring how technology can move the business forward.”

Winner of several legal industry awards in recognition of its application of IT, Bond Pearce sees NetFlow Analyzer as a key part of its success as it enables the network to cope with the demands placed on it by the law firm’s innovative technology programmes.

Bond Pearce identified the benefits unified communications could provide to its workforce in supporting mobile and flexible working and enabling more efficient collaboration through its presence functionality, instant messaging and the ability to share desktops. The unified communications suite was rolled out initially to the firm’s partners and after a positive response from them, Bond Pearce has now rolled out Microsoft Lync to all 600 employees.

Mike Godsave added: “Our lawyers are often out of the office, whether it’s in court, with clients or working from home. It’s incredibly useful for them to be able to take their landline numbers with them and take calls from their PCs and also see whether or not colleagues are available online. ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer enables us to monitor voice and video priority over other network traffic, such as back-up, meaning our lawyers get a service they can rely on.”

Mike continued: “Feedback from users across the business has been uniformly positive. In eliminating the maintenance of nearly a thousand phones and five private business exchanges (PBXs), the move to the unified communications system has generated huge cost savings for us.”

ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer has also been used to support the virtualisation of Bond Pearce’s entire server estate, a move that has reduced the number of physical servers from 100 down to 20. NetFlow Analyzer takes care of monitoring load balancing across the firm’s VMWare stack to ensure that applications and systems are using all of the available virtual network interfaces. Along with improved availability of key applications and an IT infrastructure able to better respond to the changing requirements of the business, virtualisation has reduced the costs of its server estate by 80%.

With offices in Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton, London and Aberdeen, Bond Pearce is currently in the middle of a major merger operation. The newly created firm is expected to go live on May 1 as a £95m business and has announced its intention to target international expansion. As the two networks are integrated, ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer will continue to play a key role in guaranteeing the performance of Bond Dickinson’s crucial IT systems and tools.

Having realised the need to have better control and visibility of traffic across its network and eradicate bottlenecks, Bond Pearce assessed a number of applications for the purpose. It selected ManageEngine’s NetFlow Analyzer due to its ease of use, comprehensive, configurable reporting and intuitive dashboard.