Intellectual Property Law Firm Achieves Stability and Flexibility with ePlus Storage-as-a-Service
Mitigating risk and deferring capital expenditures while preparing for the future
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Business Challenges
As the law firm plans to transition their case management software to an as-a-service platform (SaaS) within the next two years, they sought ways to modernize their infrastructure and address critical challenges:
Challenge 1
Upgrades were not made to their data center ecosystem (Cisco, NetApp, and VMware) in the last four years, leaving the infrastructure vulnerable to security threats.
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Challenge 2
The transition of a primary workload to a SaaS platform creates uncertainty in the ongoing data center infrastructure needs.
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Challenge 3
Existing equipment was nearing the end of lease, creating a critical decision point.
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Challenge 4
No disaster recovery (SRM, SnapMirror) testing had been performed in the last four years, leaving the firm concerned about their risk of lengthy outages or data loss.
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Why ePlus
To address these issues, the customer partnered with ePlus to implement a phased upgrade process involving VMware, NetApp, and Cisco. This engagement included ePlus Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) leveraging NetApp Keystone, professional services for workload migration from their legacy NetApp environment, streamlined licensing for Cisco and VMware, and strategic advisory services for future infrastructure refreshes.
- ePlus possessed the unique combination of technical expertise in all of these areas along with long-standing partnerships and certifications from key manufacturers to tackle this complex engagement and streamline deployment to speed ROI.
- As an existing customer, ePlus had knowledge of the law firm’s existing IT footprint, nuanced challenges, and business goals.
Solution
- ePlus Storage-as-a-Service leveraging NetApp Keystone
- ePlus Professional Services for data migration, infrastructure upgrades, and disaster recovery testing
- NetApp Storage, Cisco UCS, Cisco Networking, VMware Live Recovery
Business Outcomes
Proof Points
- The law firm is able to defer 25% of capital expenditure by avoiding an upfront purchase and leveraging a 24-month ePlus STaaS contract monthly consumption-based billing.
- The expected storage availability of 99.999% with ePlus STaaS mitigates critical security and operational risks associated with the previous infrastructure’s lack of updates (which are provided as part of ePlus’ offering).
- Leveraging ePlus STaaS reduces operational burden and delivers necessary upgrades, up to 267% more frequent than the customer’s prior four-year maintenance gap.
- By performing a multi-hop upgrade, ePlus reduced the overall services cost by an estimated 31%, avoiding the risk of downtime and lengthy rebuilds associated with a traditional rip-and-replace approach.
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Eliminated Long-Term Infrastructure Risk and Improved Stability
ePlus ongoing managed services reduced the time and cost of the customer’s resources to upgrade their complex, interdependent environment, effectively eliminating long-term infrastructure risk and improving overall stability. This modernized foundation minimizes potential disruptions and strengthens security posture for ongoing operations.
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Validated Disaster Recovery Capabilities and Ensured Business Continuity
The law firm was able to test and validate their disaster recovery capabilities through this engagement, ensuring that outages in their primary data center would not impact critical business and client operations. This proactive measure significantly reduces the risk of lengthy downtime and potential data loss.
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Deferred Capital Expenditures and Enabled Future Flexibility
By leveraging ePlus STaaS, the customer was able to avoid extensive upfront capital expenditures and prepare for uncertain future requirements with a more flexible monthly consumption-based cost model. This strategic approach aligns perfectly with their SaaS business plans, providing the flexibility to either extend the STaaS contract if project timelines shift or reduce on-premises storage consumption should the project be accelerated and successful.
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