Moving to a new IT environment can feel like a big step, especially when the last migration was difficult. For one Buffalo law firm, the goal was to leave a costly hosting arrangement behind without creating another disruptive transition for employees. Here’s how Just Solutions helped the firm move to Microsoft Azure and settle into its new environment.
The Challenge
The firm ran its daily work on desktops and files hosted in a provider’s private data center. That provider could only offer the capacity its own hardware allowed.
When performance suffered, the firm ended up paying for costly graphics hardware upgrades to fix a problem that wasn’t really of its making.
Moving to Azure solved the capacity problem on paper. The harder part was the move itself.
The law firm’s earlier migration into the hosted environment had been painful, and employees remembered it. Attorneys and staff also relied on Philips dictation and Dragon speech recognition, so a successful move meant more than copying files from one place to another.
The firm needed a partner who would learn how its people actually worked, coordinate the outgoing provider and software vendors, and make the new environment feel ready on day one.
The Solution
Discovery started about four months before go-live, two months before the outgoing provider was even brought into the project. That early time with the firm let our team map its environment, applications, and daily routines before the technical work began. Philips was involved too, joining several planning calls and supporting the team on cutover day.
“From the beginning, the communication was excellent. If you start there, the chance of success increases the more the communication increases. And that was proven here.” — Managing Partner
With the groundwork in place, Just Solutions built and moved:
- Desktops: an Azure Virtual Desktop environment employees open through the Windows App, from the office or remotely, with persistent profiles that keep their settings between sessions.
- Servers and data: the firm’s domain controller and file server, with file shares synchronized, validated, and restored in Azure.
- Applications: Philips dictation software and licensing, Dragon-related workflows, and Microsoft 365 apps with their plug-ins, all validated before users signed in.
- Connectivity and security: SonicWall and Azure VPN connectivity, plus the transition of Duo multi-factor authentication, Barracuda, domains, and DNS monitoring.
Cutover Day
The production cutover took place on September 15. Our team finished the final data replication and synchronization in under two hours, brought the environment online, and began connecting users.
Two Just Solutions engineers were on-site at the firm and two more supported employees remotely. Together they helped people sign in, then checked file shares, user access, network and VPN connections, and the critical applications attorneys needed. Core services were back up that same morning.
“We didn’t have to use any backup plans or rollback plans.” — Doreen Medina, PMP, Project Manager at Just Solutions
In the days that followed, our team worked through each user-specific follow-up issue until it was resolved and closed.
The Results
The firm went live on schedule, never returned to its old environment, and settled into the new one within days.
The only change most employees noticed was a slightly different sign-in routine in the morning. According to the Managing Partner, even that faded within three days.
“People don’t like change and are resistant to it. I didn’t expect it to be absolutely perfect, but it was pretty damn close.” — Managing Partner
The firm is also spending less. Azure’s capacity scales with the firm’s needs, so performance no longer depends on a provider’s hardware or on pricey upgrades to compensate for it.
Finally, Just Solutions decommissioned the old hosted environment, removed the outgoing provider’s tools and dependencies, and documented the new setup. Our help desk now provides the firm’s full IT support, giving it one point of contact going forward.
What This Means for Other Law Firms
A difficult past migration doesn’t have to define the next one. Here’s what helped Just Solutions make this cloud migration painless.
Start before the clock starts.
Our discovery work began months ahead of the technical migration. By the time the outgoing provider joined, the plan was already shaped around how the firm worked.
Your applications are the migration.
Desktops and files are the easy part. Bringing Philips into the planning and validating dictation and transcription workflows before go-live is what let attorneys keep working.
Prepare people, not just systems.
On-site and remote engineers on cutover day made the first morning manageable. Our own lesson from this project is to go further next time, with hands-on sessions that walk employees through files and bookmarks well before the switch.
Planning a Cloud Migration for Your Law Firm
If your hosted environment is getting expensive, or the last migration left your team wary of the next one, let’s talk. Just Solutions will review your current setup, including your dictation and practice applications, and show you what a move to Azure would involve. Contact us to schedule a migration review.