Law society invests €100,000 in unified communications


6 Apr 2009

The Law Society, the educational and regulatory body for the solicitors profession in Ireland, has invested €100,000 in a new unified communications (UC) system.

It is envisaged the investment will transform business processes and enhance productivity by allowing staff to collaborate in real time using their office tools and applications.

“We were relocating about 60 of our regulatory staff from a number of different offices into a new open-plan office in George’s Court,” explained Tom Blennerhassett, IT manager at The Law Society.

“It was vital that all applications were available to them at the same, or better, speed than in Blackhall Place and our other offices,” Blennerhassett added.

Datapac, the Law Society’s solution provider and a Cisco Premier Partner, proposed and implemented the Cisco solution, which comprises a Cisco wireless network with Cisco WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System). 

This allows all applications to have LAN-like speeds across the WAN to the relocated end users. 

Datapac also implemented a security solution, Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) technology, which provides advanced visibility and control.

“The UC solution allows all our staff who have been relocated to continue in their new workplace as though they were directly connected onto the corporate LAN. The headquarters’ solution has been extended to our Law School in Cork,” Blennerhassett explained.

“A single voice and data network across three sites creates more efficiency and allows our mobile workforce to work as normal, no matter where they sit on our network,” he added.

The next phase for the Law Society is to introduce this UC solution and wireless connectivity to the headquarters site at Blackhall Place.

By John Kennedy

Pictured: John Casey, sales manager, Datapac; Edel Creely, managing director, Datapac; and Tom Blennerhasset, IT manager at the Law Society