case study: cdW Remote managed seRvices

company: Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

Locations: 7 offices in 4 states

empLoyees: Approximately 600

technoLogy suppoRt staFF: 14

histoRy: Founded as Worthington & Strong in 1885, the law firm assumed its current name after Robert A. Taft and Charles P. Taft II, sons of U.S. President William Howard Taft, joined in 1924. The law firm gained national prominence when its labor department helped then-U.S. Senator Robert Taft draft the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Through a series of successful mergers, Taft has grown to become a premier regional law firm that serves individuals and businesses with needs ranging from local to international in scope.

at a glance

Managing Partners

To improve network availability for its far-flung workforce without adding significant costs, a prominent law firm adopts remote managed services as an IT operating model.

“By moving to managed services, we envisioned keeping our overall consultant spend the same while shifting to a proactive posture,” explains Brian clayton, cio for taft.

tWeet tHis!

2 case study: cdW Remote managed seRvices

Anonymity isn’t on the list of characteristics Brian Clayton

wants in a managed services provider. As the CIO of a large

law firm that has focused on building relationships since

1885, Clayton values partners who are willing to invest their

own reputations.

“It’s important that they smile when we smile and

bleed when we bleed,” says Clayton, who leads the

technology organization supporting Taft. The regional law

firm, with roughly 600 employees, proudly draws its name

from two sons of President William Howard Taft: former

U.S. Senator Robert Taft and former Cincinnati Mayor

Charles Taft.

Today, the organization represents individuals and

businesses with needs ranging from local to international

from its offices in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton,

Indianapolis, Northern Kentucky and Phoenix.

in pursuit of a partnerThe firm’s IT group focuses on user experience as its indica-

tor of success. To maintain consistent network behavior

and availability for its far-flung workforce without adding

significant costs, Taft recently completed a migration of its

IT infrastructure to CDW Remote Managed Services. The

journey originally began in 2006, when Clayton first came

on board as the law firm’s technical operations manager.

“Back then, we weren’t getting the level of service we

needed from our primary technology providers,” he says. “We

needed more than someone to process our purchase orders.”

Clayton began the search for a provider that could also act

as the firm’s IT lifecycle coordinator. “We needed someone who

would provide guidance on the best solutions for our needs,”

he says. “And we wanted a partner that would track equipment

lifecycles to help us see around technology corners.”

At the time, Taft maintained a small account with CDW.

“I called the company and was connected to our region’s

representative, Brian Hamad,” Clayton recalls. “Immediately

after meeting, we felt a difference with Hamad’s approach.”

Following initial conversations with Hamad, an advanced

technology account executive, Clayton traveled to Chicago

to tour the ISO-certified testing and configuration center

at CDW headquarters. “We met with CDW engineers who

represented key products or initiatives that were currently

not supported at Taft to the level we needed,” Clayton says.

Impressed with the site visit, Clayton and Hamad began

taking one step at a time in developing a plan for Taft to use

CDW as the law firm’s primary technology partner.

“Since we’d been burned before, we continued work-

ing wth several other technology partners,” Clayton says.

“Then, we slowly grew the relationship with CDW.”

A shared vision was key to developing the relationship,

Hamad points out. “Brian had a long-term vision of how

Taft’s IT department should be supported, but he lacked a

partner — focused on Taft’s needs — to help design, plan,

improve, measure and control all the different facets of IT,”

Hamad says. “Operational excellence, communication and

customer experience were critical on both sides.”

Over time, Hamad and CDW demonstrated a commit-

ment to Taft in multiple ways, including availability during

off hours, Clayton says. The focus always is on resolving

whatever problems or needs arise, whenever they arise, he

says. “When we’ve called Brian on a Saturday with an issue,

he’s located a tech that could help us resolve it.”

a managed moveFast-forward to late 2011: Clayton had become CIO, and as part

of that job, he had been given the responsibility for the other

teams within IT, including litigation support, docket and records

management. Additionally, a series of mergers had quadrupled

the firm’s size, requiring the absorption of multiple data cen-

ters, systems and applications from the merged entities.

“With Tier 3 managed services, I can avoid most of the calls from attorneys reminding me we’re losing

potential billable hours because the system is down.” — Taft CIO Brian Clayton

tWeet tHis!

3800.800.4239 | cdW.com

Red carpet RideWhen remote managed services came on the radar for Brian Clayton, CIO

of Taft, he turned to his trusted CDW account representative, Brian Hamad.

After discussing the Taft IT team’s interest in handing off day-to-

day management of multiple applications and systems, the advanced

technology account executive contacted Andy Brolin, a solutions

architect in CDW’s Managed Services Division.

“Hamad provided a detailed description of Taft’s needs and culture,”

Brolin recalls. “Then he suggested we invite Taft’s representatives to our

Madison, Wis., network operations center to tell them our story.”

After an initial conference call between Brolin and Clayton, Hamad

worked out trip logistics with Taft. Meanwhile Brolin and his team planned

a customized CDW Red Carpet Tour for the law firm’s system engineers.

The deep diveTo prepare for Taft’s wide-ranging needs, Brolin scheduled not only an

overview session, an executive discussion and a facilities tour, but also

three in-depth sessions. Each of the deep-dive sessions covered a major

functional area on Taft’s strategic technology plan: NetApp management,

ESX management and Cisco Unified Communications management.

“The session leaders were Level 3–certified professionals in their

disciplines,” Brolin says. “We wanted Taft to begin to form a relationship

with the actual senior engineers who would be charged with managing

their systems.”

Additionally, Brolin arranged for a practicewide technician to be

involved in all of the sessions to field questions across the CDW Managed

Services landscape. “We also provided Taft with our service catalog and

our operations manual because we want customers and prospects to

have full transparency of our operation,” Brolin says.

“It’s important for us to demonstrate how we deliver our services as

an extension of our customer’s IT department,” he adds. “We take the

time to show how we’ll integrate into a customer’s processes — not the

other way around.”

The final component of the tour was a discussion of what the post-

contract process would entail.

“Although many customers want to jump right into operational

support, we spend time talking about the transitional phase,” Brolin

says. “This includes introducing the customer to their dedicated project

manager as well as their service account manager, who is a nonbillable

person that stays with the customer for the life of the contract.”

in the ZoneFor Clayton, the tour struck just the right chord. “It helped my engineers

start becoming comfortable with a situation that would be totally new

for us,” he says.

More important, the red-carpet care didn’t stop there. It has

continued on through the transition, he says.

“For example, I can’t say enough about our project manager,” says

Clayton. “She keeps us focused when we start to go off on a tangent.”

And, as systems became operational at CDW’s network operating

center, the VIP treatment continued.

“Unlike some other situations, we receive true Tier 3 service from

CDW,” Clayton says. “If something begins to go wrong at 2 a.m., CDW

detects and fixes it. CDW works with my team to prevent inefficient

user experiences and maintain availability.

“It’s so seamless,” he continues, “that I don’t receive surprise calls

anymore from attorneys upset that the network is down. We are more

proactive and have someone always watching our environment.”

“We were supporting five data centers and more than

50 terabytes of storage in total,” Clayton says. “We had a

large percentage of active storage for litigation support

alone, which we put on a separate server and storage sys-

tem to ensure appropriate performance.”

With the disparate systems and data centers, pressures in-

volving mobility and lawyers’ seeking access to systems at all

hours of the day and night, Taft’s IT staff found itself spending

more time putting out pop-up technical fires than working on

business-critical functions and advancing the ball.

“Our maintenance windows were quickly becoming non-

existent,” Clayton says. “And, we were spending significant

consultant resources on reacting to situations and resolving

issues and not adding the value we intended. We needed to

get back to advancing the ball.”

In a bid to become a more proactive IT organization,

Clayton and his team began investigating the viability

of migrating the Taft infrastructure to remote managed

services. “By moving to managed services, we envisioned

keeping our overall budget the same while shifting to a

proactive posture.”

After some due diligence, Taft narrowed its choice of

potential managed services partners to CDW and another provider.

Both of these providers had demonstrated their commitment to Taft

and its success. Both had a long, proven product and service catalog.

Both were always looking around the corner for the next need. Then,

Clayton placed a call to Hamad.

Initially, Hamad helped establish a conference call with CDW’s

Remote Managed Services team. Later, he arranged a facilities tour

of CDW’s Madison, Wis., network operations center for Clayton and

the Taft infrastructure team. (See “Red Carpet Ride.”)

“At CDW, we participated in long detailed meetings with the engi-

neers who would actually be managing our systems,” Clayton says. “At

the other provider, the sales people did a majority of the talking.”

According to Clayton, these meetings — Taft systems engineer to

CDW systems engineer — settled the selection. “When I asked my

team which managed services provider they preferred, they imme-

diately said CDW,” he says.

For Clayton, CDW’s ability to demonstrate its level of investment to

his staff was critical. “I wasn’t just asking my team to turn over moni-

toring physical servers and the sending out alerts, I was asking them to

allow someone else to become a part of the internal team and manage

the environment,” he says. “This was a significant change for us.”

By March 2012, the contract was completed for Microsoft Windows

4800.800.4239 | cdW.com

This content is provided for informational purposes. It is believed to be accurate but could contain errors. CDW does not intend to make any warranties, express or implied, about the products, services, or information that is discussed. CDW®, CDW•G® and The Right Technology. Right Away® are registered trademarks of CDW LLC. PEOPLE WHO GET IT™ is a trademark of CDW LLC. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners.Together we strive for perfection. ISO 9001:2000 certified111216—121221 ©2012 CDW LLC

case study: cdW Remote managed seRvices

For more information, visit: cdw.com/managed-services

in the ZoneTaft CIO Brian Clayton offers three tips for a successful transition

from an on-premises IT environment to managed services:

• Define your goals: Doing so will ensure service levels align

with needs and costs. For example, consider whether all your

applications require Gold (Tier 3) services; in some cases, Silver

or Bronze might be sufficient.

• Assess cultures: The goal is to identify a managed services

provider whose culture dovetails with that of your organization.

Partner with a provider that fits into your culture, rather than

the other way around.

• Align with ITIL or any other best-practices model: The IT

Infrastructure Library offers best practices for turning systems

over to a provider. Ensure that your partner can meet your

expectations efficiently and cost-effectively.

Server, Exchange and SQL, as well as NetApp storage

management and VMware vCenter server virtualization.

Next came the process of transitioning systems and

applications to one of CDW’s managed services, which began

with an exhaustive review of the technologies in the firm’s

environment and discussions about why various design

decisions had been made in the past, what changes needed

to be made and how to get back in line with IT Infrastructure

Library (ITIL) best practices. This is where the trust of the

firm’s engineers in CDW’s team paid off, Clayton says.

“We’d been growing so fast. With CDW’s assistance, we

were able to get ourselves back to following best prac-

tices,” he says. “The transition to managed services forced

us to focus on these best practices and to move forward.”

Taft also used the transition phase to begin consolidating

its multiple HP-enabled data centers into a primary center

in Cincinnati and a failover facility at its Indianapolis office.

Once the firm completes this consolidation effort, Clayton

envisions moving both the primary and failover centers to

two geographically separate collocation environments.

“When we’re finished, we’ll have an appropriate amount

of physical and virtual servers at the primary data center

and duplicated at the disaster recovery site,” he says. ”We

will be hosting production, litigation and our virtual desktop

environments in these data centers.”

next up: networks and moreLong a Cisco Systems network shop, the firm also has

recently adopted Cisco Unified Communications, including

Voice over IP telephony and video.

“As the data center consolidation and UC initiatives proceed,

our plans are to move our LAN, WAN and UC maintenance

under CDW’s managed services umbrella,” Clayton says.

Waiting in the wings is a virtual desktop project for the

firm’s HP workstations and notebooks, as well as a bring-

your-own-device initiative that will let users access firm

IT assets from their personal iOS, Android and Microsoft

Windows devices.

In addition, Clayton looks forward to leveraging HP

Autonomy more effectively for both electronic and physical

content management. The team is looking forward to dis-

covering additional technologies that can enhance search

and access within the firm and on mobile platforms.

“We’re moving toward a zero-paper growth strategy,”

he says. “With a long history and many paper documents,

we are challenged like many other firms in effective records

management, retention and proper disposition. Some of our

older original documents will be retained as paper, rather than

stored solely in electronic format. Our yardstick is locating the

original owner, which can be challenging for documents that

are more than 50 years old.”

Clayton notes that none of these new initiatives would be

easily completed without the move to managed services.

“We receive true Tier 3 service,” he says. “The CDW engi-

neers know our environment, and we always get the same

support team on the phone when we call.

“With CDW’s expertise, we have peace of mind as well as

advanced technical knowledge,” he continues. “When we’re

ready to move to a collocation environment, we know they

can help us through it.”

Hamad reports a similar enthusiasm for his longtime

client. “It truly is about working together,” Hamad says.

“Brian knows I’ll never come to him with products that are

end of life. Instead, I look over the horizon to recommend the

latest and most effective solutions to meet Taft’s goals.”

It’s pretty simple in the end, Hamad says: “We’ve built a

rock-solid foundation that enables Taft to trust that we’ll

never let them down.”

tWeet tHis!