© 2008 Venable LLP
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Case Study – Venable LLP
Darrin Dyson
Director of Development and Systems Integration
Venable LLP
June 17, 2010
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© 2010 Venable LLP
Brief overview of our firm and our current
environment
Overcoming challenges
Planning for silverlight and sharepoint 2010
The road ahead
Q&A
agenda
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© 2010 Venable LLP
our law firm
AM LAW 100
7 Offices all located in the US
540 attorneys
600 support staff
65 it staff
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© 2010 Venable LLP
our desktop environment
Windows XP
Office 2003
Opentext dm 5.1.0.5
MOSS 2007
Workshare Professional
pdfdocs
Over 50 additional apps
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© 2010 Venable LLP
business drivers
Dynamic and richer content
Connectivity to lob data
Entity categorization (directory of firm assets)
Matter centric focus
Common look and feel
Engagement of practice areas, marketing
constructs and staff
Business process automation
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© 2010 Venable LLP
how we got there
Find a product that will address the technical
requirements
Target big wins out of the gate
Establish phased rollout plan
Partner with companies that have the same
technical vision and a roadmap that is focused on
our business goals
Revamp and revise (iterate)
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© 2010 Venable LLP
sharepoint environment
Windows 2008 64-Bit (started 32-bit MISTAKE!!)
Single Farm
Web Front End (Virtual)
Application Server (Virtual)
3rd Party Application Server (Handshake)
3rd Party Application Server (K2 BlackPearl)
Dedicated SRS server (Virtual)
SQL Server (Shared Metal)
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© 2010 Venable LLP
what was successful
Integration of lob systems (3rd party tools played a
significant role)
Give us more, faster !!
Time to market
Client/matter portal
Relevancy of content
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oops!!!
Where do I find…?
We want OUR content on the home page
Enterprise search YAY!! … wait, I can see ALL of
these documents
So, where did the Internet go?
How do i print…?
Classifieds, classifieds, classifieds…
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© 2010 Venable LLP
challenges that surfaced
Content is available but digesting it is sometimes
difficult
Search engine is too exacting
Can you improve performance?
Can you make it faster?
MAKE IT FASTER !!!!
Make it ‘shiny’
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© 2010 Venable LLP
next
Revamp interface to leverage silverlight
Sharepoint 2010
Executive dashboards
Continue to leverage lob data
Engage with business analyst to leverage K2
Blackpearl investment
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© 2010 Venable LLP
silverlight
Identified as a key technology early on in
deployment
Richness of design and access to .net framework
Lob data access
Huge community support
3rd Party vendor support
Sharepoint 2010 webpart
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© 2010 Venable LLP
sharepoint 2010 features that compel
Silverlight web part
Visual Studio integration
Enhanced search (FAST)
Social networking
SharePoint Designer
Business Data Services
Managed metadata services
Architecture decoupling
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© 2010 Venable LLP
planned desktop
Moving to VDI
Windows 7
Office 2010
SharePoint 2010
DMS??
SQL Server 2008 R2
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© 2010 Venable LLP
summary
Develop a strategy that leverages the firms
strategic plan
It’s about the data
Open your mind and lose your inhibitions
Partner with technology companies that share
your vision
Revamp and revise