Compuware Vantage Helps Minimise IT Risk for Large Law Firm

Compuware has announced that Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn implemented Compuware Vantage to ensure superior application service for the firm, 24x7. Honigman -founded in 1948 - offers comprehensive legal services to more than 15,000 clients annually, making it one of Detroit's largest law firms.

Managing system operations at a law firm is different than at most corporations. The nature of legal practice and its associated high expectations can add to the overall complexity of business operations. Honigman first implemented Compuware Vantage to avoid disruption in service, maintain uptime and improve response times when upgrading its Windows environment.

"Any downtime is unacceptable," said Pat Beesley, IS Manager, Honigman. "Our attorneys work all hours of the day and night and expect our computers to be available 24x7."

"Unscheduled downtime of a critical application during the workday that prevents lawyers from providing services to clients can cause lost revenue opportunity on the order of $50,000 an hour," explained Michael Gable, COO, Honigman.

Honigman's move to Microsoft Exchange eliminated the level of performance management the firm formerly experienced with its Novell environment. In addition, the IT staff knew its current, expanded environment was more vulnerable to potential problems and disruptions in service. With more than 600 people who worked around the clock, Beesley was not confident that the current point-in-time analysis of system performance could give the lawyers the level of service they needed.

To address these concerns, the firm selected Compuware Vantage to monitor its Exchange servers. The Compuware solution was up and running within a day, and almost immediately the IT staff received its first alert about a potential performance problem on the network.

"We got a notification that a user was attempting to send a large e-mail, and it was going to bog down the entire system," explained Tracey Baetzel, CIO at Honigman. "We quickly moved the e-mail to an after-hours schedule, notified the sender, and established a policy for handling large e-mail attachments."

After seeing the value Compuware Vantage provided, Honigman decided only four months later to roll out the Vantage product to all 90 servers enterprise-wide. The firm has since realized significant savings in time and effort.

Proactive measures make Compuware Vantage valuable to the firm as the IT team can now address performance problems before they impact attorneys and support staff. Vantage provides the IT team with specific reports on each server, identifying when a fault occurs. This allows IT staff to focus on a problem before the calls come in. Compuware Vantage, with its accurate reports and instant access to a database of historical and real-time information, also enables Honigman to eliminate many time-consuming activities such as audits.

With Compuware Vantage's integrated end-to-end view of performance and availability, Honigman can take client service and satisfaction further. "My goal is to provide our attorneys and staff with dependable computer service from the office, home or other remote locations, and Compuware Vantage is the right tool we need to continue to provide proactive, on-time service," said Beesley.