London law firm spreads the risk in £4.5m networking deal

London law firm Allen & Overy has signed a £4.5m deal with Fibernet to provide managed data connectivity and disaster recovery facilities.

As part of the deal, Fibernet is providing connectivity between Allen & Overy's new London headquarters and a data centre located near Reading, which is the major plank in the law firm’s disaster recovery and risk management strategy.

Allen & Overy already had a contract with Fibernet to provide data connectivity between its London offices, and this deal extends that agreement.

The solution chosen allows Allen & Overy to transfer local area network (Lan) and storage area network (SAN) traffic between geographically diverse data centres, as well as protecting business continuity for the company in the event of a disaster.

Andrew Brammer, Allen & Overy head of global IT operations, said, “The main business driver for undertaking a managed network of this nature is risk management.

"We are separating our people from our data. By doing this we are protecting two of the most critical elements of our business, our transactional data and our 'know-how' intellectual capital,” he said.