Leading UK Law Firm, Blake Lapthorn, selects NextiraOne as its partner for the consultancy, design, implementation and support of its next generation communications platform

[Lichfield] – 20 October, 2008. Europe’s leading expert in communications services, NextiraOne, is providing the communications infrastructure behind law firm Blake Lapthorn’s move to its new flagship office in Southampton.

NextiraOne has been responsible for the data cabling, Data Centre design and build, and has designed, planned and managed the installation of a Converged Cisco10/100/1000 LAN infrastructure and unified communications platform. The LAN infrastructure will include wireless and security requirements, both based on Cisco architecture.

Blake Lapthorn is one of the UK's leading law firms, employing 850 people in five locations (London, Oxford, Portsmouth, Winchester and Southampton). The Southampton office will house more than 300 staff and the data centre will hold the firm's centralised IT and communications infrastructure.

Under the contract, worth in excess of £1.3m over five years, NextiraOne has provided consultancy support and design expertise from the early planning stages. It has advised Blake Lapthorn on how to support its long-term business and growth objectives by building a next generation communications infrastructure

Vivien Eaden, IT Director at Blake Lapthorn, said: “It was particularly important for us to have one supplier who could provide all the expertise required and who was prepared to meet our timescales. NextiraOne clearly showed us that they could deliver the breadth and depth of expertise we needed, and did so in a professional, client-centric manner. NextiraOne has delivered the project on time, within budget, and has provided exceptional quality. This is one supplier that I would definitely recommend to others and we look forward to working in partnership with NextiraOne as we rollout the communications infrastructure to our other offices."

The data centre has been designed to provide a high level of resilience in order to ensure business continuity and the firm has reduced its carbon footprint at every opportunity. The new infrastructure will support Blake Lapthorn's increasing demand for mobile working as its staff increasingly collaborate cross-location, cross-discipline, and with their clients.

The project commenced in April 2008 and completed mid-September 2008. Vivien Eaden continues: “These were already very aggressive timescales but thanks to NextiraOne's support and flexibility, we were able to relocate 100 staff into the building in June 2008 as an interim move. All of the work has been conducted to avoid any disruption to our legal staff. Feedback from the early movers was excellent, which was encouraging to the staff that followed. I have an excellent IT team who have all enjoyed our experience of working closely with NextiraOne ."

Steven Skakel, managing director UK & Ireland at NextiraOne, said: “Our staff are highly trained and skilled in delivering major projects of this complexity and working to extremely tight deadlines. We have delivered a number of solutions to top legal companies and were therefore familiar with the concerns our customer would be facing. As we have been involved with Blake Lapthorn from the early stages of their project, we have been able to keep to the planned schedule, delivering additional benefits to our customer.”