International law firm
Stephenson Harwood has chosen Windows XP overVista
in its latest desktop refresh, in order to maintain
compatibility with its existing suite of
applications.
Chris Petrie, director of IT at Stephenson Harwood, said that many
applications used in the legal industry do not yet support Vista.
Choosing XP over Vista is part of a strategy to ensure that the IT
system remains stable, he said.
“We are going through a major refresh, changing a lot of software.
We have had a very good IT culture here with very good uptime. It
is down to our attention to detail and using well-tested
products.
“There is a lot of me-too stuff going on in this industry, but we
look for stability. If lawyers are not working, they are not able
to generate fee income,” said Petrie. The firm, which is part-way
through its desktop upgrade, plans to migrate from
Novell Groupwise and
eDirectory to
Microsoft Exchange with Active Directory.
It will also adopt Intel’s
vPro hardware chip-based security technology to secure desktops
and laptops. The law firm is also deploying VMware’s
virtualisation platform in a bid to cut electricity use. “We
had heat and power issues and also wanted to be greener and
demonstrate corporate responsibility, and where possible, simplify
the infrastructure,” said Petrie.
In parallel with the software refresh, Stephenson Harwood
introduced SecureWave’s Sanctuary application last December. The
security software enables only authorised devices to connect to a
network, laptop or PC, and only authorised applications to execute
on the network.
As a result of using Sactuary, helpdesk call rates have been
reduced as users experienced fewer application problems, said
Petrie.
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