Bryan Cave is a large corporate law firm whose approximately 900 attorneys and 1,100 staff members provide business and litigation services to clients worldwide. The company has a dozen offices across the U.S. and a strong presence in the United Kingdom, continental Europe and Asia.

The Challenge: Giving Attorneys the Tools to Strengthen Client Relationships

As an international law firm whose attorneys and staff travel widely, Bryan Cave found its strategic goals of increased profits and expansion hampered by a decentralized IT system. “Every office had its own server farm which, of course, was costly in terms of hardware and support,” said Neeraj Rajpal, CIO. “But even more important, it was impacting our overall business because we lacked the flexibility to deliver applications and data to our people when they were traveling, working from home or at another office.”

He continued, “Our long-term plan is to become number one in client relationships in the world. The issue was how to give our attorneys the tools they need to improve relationships with clients worldwide.”

In addition to flexible application delivery to mobile users, Bryan Cave wanted its IT system to support fast integration of acquired entities and new offices, and provide continuity of operations during a disaster.

Implementing a Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure Solution

“The first thing we decided to do was to consolidate our datacenters and put all of our applications and data in one central location per region –- the U.S., Europe and Asia,” said Rajpal. “After centralization, we originally planned to run the applications in a traditional client/server architecture. But when we considered the return on investment for centralized application management and upgrades, and the flexibility we wanted to provide for our attorneys who travel so much, Citrix came to the forefront.”

Bryan Cave was already using Citrix Presentation Server™ (part of the Citrix XenApp™ product family, the new name for Presentation Server) for remote access to a few applications, so the IT team was familiar with the technology. “We didn’t look at any other products because for our needs, Citrix was far and away the best choice.”

Working with MTM Technologies, a Platinum Citrix® Solution Advisor, the team implemented Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 in all three datacenters. Currently, nearly 400 applications, including PeopleSoft for human resources management, Microsoft® Office, DTE for time entry, and law office software such as LegalKEY Conflicts Management, are delivered to 2,000 users. These users –- every person in the firm –- include partners, staff attorneys, and professional and general services staff. They connect using desktops and laptops.

Rajpal said, “We have built two kinds of server farms: a core server farm that hosts enterprise applications; and farms that are specific to our different client service groups. For example, if I am an attorney in the tax practice area, my tax-related applications will be delivered from that server farm.” Citrix technology enables role-based access using policies set by the administrators.  

Bryan Cave also leverages the secure application delivery capability of Presentation Server, Platinum Edition powered by Citrix Access Gateway™, and the application performance monitoring capability powered by Citrix EdgeSight™.

Anytime, Anywhere Delivery of Applications

Virtualized application delivery using Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition is enabling Bryan Cave’s lawyers and staff to service clients from anywhere, particularly when traveling or working from home. Rajpal explained, “Clients expect quick responses 24/7, but previously it could be a problem when attorneys were away from the office. After we implemented Citrix, people started noticing that they could get their applications and data anytime, any place. That was the return on investment that really impressed them.”

Further, the Citrix solution helps Bryan Cave handle an interruption by enabling employees to connect to the Presentation Server environment from any Web-enabled computer. “We have had some local interruptions such as at one office in California, which is connected to a power grid that goes down frequently. With Citrix’s Access Gateway connectivity, if there is a power outage in the building, employees just go somewhere like a coffee shop that has Internet access, and they are up and running again.”

Fast Integration of New Entities and Locations

The Citrix solution is making it easy for Bryan Cave to grow -– both organically and through acquisitions –- by streamlining integration of new offices and employees. Rajpal said, “We opened two new offices this year –- in Milan, Italy and Hamburg, Germany –- and it took only six weeks from start to finish. All we needed to do was get a WAN connection into the regional datacenter, install our Citrix image on the computers and the offices were up and running. This deployment strategy allows us to do the same with any new office, including litigation support sites.

“People realized what we had built with Citrix was really cutting-edge. Even our chairman commented on how fast we were able to open these offices. He said what we had done was pretty amazing.

He continued, “With Citrix, we have the flexibility and the scalability we need to expand. If we need to add a thousand users, all I am going to do is add more servers to the datacenter and buy Citrix licenses. That’s it.”

Streamlined IT Administration

For Rajpal and his team, a key advantage of Citrix Presentation Server, Platinum Edition is centralized management. “The biggest benefit to our team is flexibility. Think of it this way –- we have Microsoft Exchange 2003 right now and are looking at Exchange 2007. If we were still in a decentralized environment, we’d have to go to every office and perform updates. With this environment, we don’t.”

Future Plans

Bryan Cave recently rolled out EdgeSight performance monitoring capability that is part of Presentation Server, Platinum Edition. The IT team has been using this functionality to troubleshoot user issues with application performance, but also plans to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 with Citrix XenApp (the newest version of Presentation Server).

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