The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/163881
case studies A Lync of a Different Kind by Anne Costello of Grippo & Elden Having just moved to Lync as our PBX, it's too soon to tell if the project is a complete success, a job killer or something in between. Does everyone have a phone with a dial tone on his or her desk? Yes. Is everyone happy? Well, we're working on that. A Little History Grippo & Elden just celebrated its 25th anniversary. In that time, we've had 14 end-user hardware refreshes. Our networking infrastructure has gone through many iterations as well. The only things that haven't changed much … our IT management and our phones. Before Lync, the firm had only two other phone systems. The firm acquired the lease on the first system, an AT&T Definity G3, from the previous tenant of our first office space and maintained that lease for 17 years. In 2005, the firm moved offices and switched phone systems to a leased Avaya Communication Manager. The 2005 move was a huge transition for us. Not only did we move physically, we also moved from Token Ring to Ethernet and from Netware to Windows servers. To add an extra bit of fun to the move, we also deployed all new user hardware and printers. Although Communication Manager is a VoIP system, we decided to treat it like a traditional PBX and installed it and the phones on a separate physical network with plans of eventually leveraging some of its VoIP-enabled features. Eventually never happened, and each time we looked at expanding the use of the Avaya system — adding features like unified messaging and soft phones — the cost, complexity and hassle just got in the way. Need for Change End users wanted more from our system, with unified messaging high on everyone's list. People on the road and working from home wanted to make and receive calls on their office phone number. Attorneys needed to set up Web meetings more frequently and wanted a solution that didn't always involve IT or an outside 32 Peer to Peer service. IT (hey, that's me!) wanted to provide secure instant messaging because we knew how useful it could be. Our boss wanted everyone to think of smart ways to save money. Traditionally, the firm had bought almost all technology rather than leasing equipment. The phone system was one rare exception, with both the Definity and Avaya systems being leased. Looking at the bills from Avaya, this no longer made sense for the firm. The monthly lease payments and support contract costs were high — especially considering we rarely used support. We knew we could save money and give our users what they wanted by deploying a new firm-owned system that we managed and supported ourselves. Why Lync? We were aware of and investigated other systems before deciding on Lync. A number of changes happened since 2005, making Lync the obvious choice for us. The first was our move from Netware to Windows, followed quickly by a move from GroupWise to Exchange. We had become a shop that embraced almost all things Microsoft, and we wanted to leverage our investment in their products. We also wanted to keep our system as simple as possible. Lync just talks to Exchange — there's no third-party gateway to maintain for unified messaging. If you know how to manage other Microsoft products, you'd know how to manage Lync. If there's something you need to set but don't know how, don't worry — there's a PowerShell command for that. The other thing that sold us on Lync was seeing it in action. Like many firms, we are virtualized heavily. To be honest, a few years ago we were too heavily virtualized, with demand outstripping the capacity of our initial VMware system. Although we had rarely relied on consultants up to that point, we brought in Project Leadership Associates (PLA) to help us redesign our system and have partnered with them on many projects since. Seeing our PLA consultants use Lync did it for us.