Roq Delivers Automation Monitoring Solution for Leading Global Law Firm

The Client 

Linklaters LLP is a multinational law firm, headquartered in London, England. Founded in 1838, it is a member of the "Magic Circle" of elite London-headquartered law firms. It currently employs over 2,800 lawyers across 30 offices in 20 countries.

When the enforced remote working brought about by COVID-19 triggered an unprecedented surge in the number of people using remote access resources the client had a limited number of licenses and needed to know when they were nearing their full entitlement. .

In addition to this issue, their remote management tools became unreliable.

The tools in question couldn’t adequately handle the increased demand at first, and the Client’s IT Support teams were only aware of issues when they were reported by users, or when their IT Support Engineers discovered an error, resulting in slow communication to the wider business, productivity downtime and lost business hours.

Roq’s Solution

Roq implemented a creative and highly effective automated solution to monitor the status of the Client’s two key remote access tools – one used for communication/collaboration, and the other for remote access to virtual machines featuring all the resources a business user may require.

Roq identified an opportunity to introduce an innovative solution in the shape of automation monitoring tools, built by Roq’s engineering experts and utilising elements of existing technical frameworks.

The first solution implemented was an automated virtual desktop usage checker. This solution operated by logging into the Virtual Machine Manager tool and checking the number of virtually hosted machines that were in use versus the total number available. When they reached more than 90% capacity, an email was triggered and sent to IT Support to let them know that capacity was about to be breached – and they could then choose to monitor it themselves more closely, or purchase more licenses.

The second solution that ROQ delivered was an automated status checker for the Client’s collaboration tool, which queried the tool’s service status website and checked that all of the services were listed as working as planned. If not, an email was triggered to IT Support, and a file placed on a server with details of the service failure. Another tool could then be used that could detect that file, and automatically put a warning on the IT Support web page to say that they were aware of an issue.

The solution was delivered quickly, worked first time and added value immediately.

The Outcome  

The implementation resulted in a string of benefits including:

• The solutions run continuously, reporting every five minutes and monitoring the tool’s status far more regularly and efficiently than the Client would be able to manually. The implementation of these solutions meant that for the first time ever, the Client had a way of being automatically notified of any issues with either of the tools.

• Proactive management of licence capacity across the two tools, giving control to the IT support teams and saving unnecessary investment

• A significant decrease in IT Support calls by finding and eliminating issues before they impact users

• Elimination of the need for manual checks, saving approximately one business day per week

• A pro-active communication method to the wider business to remove the detrimental impact on productivity; and

• Increased reliability surrounding system checks, preventing any unwelcome surprises.

If you’d like to find out more about how Roq can support your business, please email us at ask@roq.co.uk.