Baker Botts migrates over 1500 professionals to iManage Cloud in 90 days

Baker Botts is an Am Law 50 international law firm that has been in operation for more than 176 years. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the firm has approximately 725 lawyers working throughout its 15 global offices. Since its founding, the firm has served leading industries, organizations, and individuals, while staying at the forefront of emerging technologies.

The business challenge

Aligning to a larger cloud-first strategy

Baker Botts first started working with iManage in 2013, utilizing an on-premises version of iManage Work for documents and email management across the firm. In 2016 the firm planned a migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and they needed to upgrade several of their key applications — including iManage Work — to be compliant with Windows 10.

“We had an aggressive schedule for deploying Windows 10,” explained Tracy Hallenberger, Chief Knowledge Officer, Baker Botts. “Moving to iManage Cloud offered the fastest way to get our iManage implementation ready for Windows 10 within a very compressed time period, and it aligned with our larger IT strategy of moving towards cloud services.”

The solution

Because of the existing relationship with iManage — and the deep expertise consistently demonstrated by iManage people — Baker Botts selected iManage professional services to oversee the migration to the cloud.

“One of the things that’s most exciting to me as a technology professional is when I ask a vendor a question, and they not only can answer my question, but they’re three or four steps in front of me,” said Karen Lockhart, Associate Director of Enterprise Business Systems, Baker Botts. “That’s how it was with iManage. They’ve got a really knowledgeable team, and we had a lot of trust in them to execute and help us meet our deadline.”

Business outcomes

Working with iManage professional services, Baker Botts deployed iManage Cloud to 13 of its 15 worldwide offices. The two remaining offices will utilize a hybrid cloud approach where Baker Botts can retain information on-premises and easily move to the iManage Cloud based on their needs.

The iManage Cloud deployment was completed in under 90 days, successfully meeting the timeframe for the Windows 10 rollout. The actual transition time was less than 24 hours over a single weekend.

With the deployment of iManage Cloud complete, Baker Botts has been able to remove 55 servers from its server bank, reducing the amount of time and effort that needs to be dedicated towards routine tasks, like data center maintenance.

Looking ahead

The firm now has the foundation to extend its cloud deployment to additional iManage products that can enhance the productivity of their professionals, such as iManage Mobility, which securely provides anywhere, anytime access to critical documents and emails, and iManage Records Manager for physical and electronic records management — all available in a single integrated cloud service.

“With iManage, we can present our professionals with a compelling, holistic solution for getting their work done wherever and whenever they need to,” said Hallenberger. “As we evolved our IT environment, it was a smart decision on our part to stick with iManage, deepen our commitment, and see the next levels it could help us reach.”