Alker & Ball Solicitors - Case Study

About

Alker & Ball are a well established legal practitioners based in the Northwest of England. They specialise in both residential and commercial law with an emphasis being placed on being able to provide expertise in various legal specialties.

Problem

Alker & Ball wanted to keep in line with the advances in information and communications technology. They wanted to do this by way implementing a secure, durable and cost efficient business network. Due to the confidential nature of much of their business Alker & Ball needed to ensure that any system installed would adhere to strict legislation laid out by various governing bodies and societies. With numerous PC's Alker & Ball wanted to ensure optimum performance of the network at all times with security of their data in a decentralized environment their number one priority. The management and security of paper and email communications was also a concern for Alker & Ball.

Solution

it4 decided to propose the installation of a terminal application server and document management system. This setup not only gives Alker & Ball a much longer life span from their hardware systems but ensures all data including paper is managed and maintained on a central server.

it4 then replaced Alker & Balls existing desktops with Thin Client Terminals and hardware firewall's to ensure full external data security is maintained. Physical server security was also implemented during the implementation with the inclusion of floor standing steel server cabinets and daily offsite backup of their existing systems.

All information including paper documents are accessible over the secure external link with the entire system management being included in all the finance arrangements made with it4.

Mr Keith Whitehead, Senior partner, commented, "this system has revolutionised our entire practice"