SPIE helps the law firm CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats with its digital transformation

Roll-out of a hyper-converged infrastructure to guarantee performance and speed

 

Paris, 10 July 2019 – SPIE ICS, a French subsidiary of the SPIE Group, the independent European leader in multi-technical services in the areas of energy and communications, has just completed a private cloud transformation for the law firm CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats. This contract, which is a continuation of the services and commitments that SPIE ICS has been delivering since 2014, makes it possible to reach new levels of performance and flexibility through the use of hyper-convergence technologies.

An “Infrastructure as a service” (Iaas) provision that is dynamic and cost-effective

Back in 2014, CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, a reference in the world of business, was one of the first business law firms to assign the outsourcing of its IT infrastructure and the storage of its data on a private cloud to SPIE ICS, a digital services subsidiary of SPIE France. The aim of this highly innovative approach was to protect the storage and transfer of sensitive data while guaranteeing very high data availability. To access the cloud securely, SPIE ICS also deployed a high-speed internal network connecting the head office in Neuilly - as well as the sites in Strasbourg and Lyon - to two data centres hosting the infrastructure.

Confronted with the sustained growth of its client and the modernisation of its business functions and collaborative practices, SPIE ICS suggested transforming the firm’s infrastructure to integrate the latest storage and computing technologies by exploiting the flexibility of hyper-converged solutions. With the expert help of its subsidiary S-Cube, a company specialising in the integration of data centre technologies, SPIE ICS designed a server-based solution simultaneously integrating network, storage and computing services. The highly flexible nature of the data storage software management offers an increase in performance and the speed necessary to tackle the law firm’s challenges in terms of development. A completely transparent, user-friendly method of adapting the services to the new solution has made it possible to ensure a seamless migration of services and data.

“Without undermining the outsourced model that we had developed, we wanted to take it a step further by focussing on a modular all-in-one solution that is both suitable and ambitious,” explains Guillaume Forra, a business engineer at SPIE ICS. “We are delighted with the confidence that CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats has placed in our teams to preserve its leading position in the technology industry and monitor developments in the market. It’s an exciting challenge!”

A tried and tested solution for very proficient contract management

The expertise and the support provided by SPIE ICS were deciding factors in accepting this bold technological shift. The infrastructure deployed has modernised, particularly in terms of storage capacity (multiplied threefold in 4 years), and the speed has increased from 1 to 10 Gbps in 5 years. Since 2014, there has not been a single network failure recorded.

“We put our trust in SPIE ICS back in 2014 because we wanted the support of a company with impeccable technical abilities that was modest in size, reactive, and in a sufficiently strong financial position to guarantee the sustainability of the project,” states Philippe Agazzi, Head of Operations and IT at CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats. Adding: “In 2018, led by the Deputy Head of IT, Frédéric Soulier, our representatives were able to be creative, both on a technological level and in terms of the business and commercial aspects. Our criteria include technical and financial flexibility with a view to achieving better performance, but also accurate contract management thanks to the monthly and quarterly indicators.”

By partnering with a key player in the storage market, CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats has completed its digital transformation and now stands out among its competitors with its bold technological choices.