Customer Profile – Legal Services
The award-winning, global top 10 law practice provides legal services to clients internationally, including some of the world’s largest multinationals. Through 70+ offices in 30 countries, the firm provides a full range of legal services in areas such as M&A, human capital and labor, energy and infrastructure, dispute resolution and litigation, real estate, and construction, while also advising insurance and reinsurance companies on a wide variety of legal matters. The firm’s integrated service model combines client-facing expertise, technology, service delivery, and legal project management.
Business Challenges
A multinational law firm connected its 70+ offices to regional data centers and hosted cloud applications via Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute.¹ The firm used a combination of VPLS and local internet circuits for connectivity. Each branch office had switches, WAN routers, and firewalls as part of its WAN stack. All traffic from branch locations was sent via static layer 2 circuits to the data centers for inspection.
- Heavy Maintenance Needs: The aging and expensive WAN required significant support and maintenance, taxing the company’s resources.
- High Monthly Costs: The network configuration was expensive to operate and support.
Scalability Limitations: Since the existing network routes were static, the company didn’t have the flexibility to scale them dynamically. - Security Risks: The unconsolidated, local, static network stacks posed security threats and increased network monitoring requirements.
The Globalgig Solution
The law firm tapped Globalgig for its deep SD-WAN expertise and the ability to deliver flexible, scalable, and cost-effective global network connectivity. The Globalgig team conducted a comprehensive discovery process to understand the customer’s needs before recommending an optimal network solution, always taking a vendor- and platform-agnostic perspective. Globalgig custom-engineered a new network infrastructure that included a Palo Alto Prisma SASE/SD-WAN platform designed for high performance and cost-efficiency.²
The solution included:
- Replacing expensive, cumbersome local WANs with next-generation SASE/SD-WAN technology, improving performance and availability, and reducing maintenance expenses
- Deploying the SD-WAN platform with a cloud-based firewall, reducing the WAN stack from five pieces of equipment to two
- Migrating away from a static, inflexible network infrastructure to a dynamic infrastructure that provided the scalability to support a growing enterprise
The network platform implementation plan focused first on the company’s nine US locations, with the remaining global sites rolling out over time.
Results – Better Performance and Scalability at Reduced Costs
The law firm realized significant advantages from its transition from high-maintenance local WAN stacks to the Globalgig-designed Palo Alto Prisma Access SD-WAN and cloud firewall, including:
- A 30% reduction in monthly network support and maintenance costs
- Reduced risk due to the new network’s improved security
- Substantial improvements in network performance, enhancing the user experience • Greater scalability and flexibility via a more dynamic network infrastructure
The customer also simplified its network management by eliminating WAN stacks at each location. The firm gained the efficiency of working with a single provider to meet its global network needs and deliver a solution optimized for its unique operating environment.