Before the law firm Svensson Nøkleby moved into new premises over four floors in the middle of Drammen city center last year, they had already done much to streamline IT deliveries and move away from an incomprehensible situation with many different suppliers.
- We had already moved all our servers to Braathes data center i Rygge, and got them planning the networking solutions and delivering the equipment to the new building, says Linda Marie Tanum, who is the administration manager.
We meet Tanum in one of the great conference rooms. Here it is rigged for both wireless and wired use, but Tanum says that they have never had to fall back on wired connection.
- The process of getting everything in place was completely seamless, where a project team was in Braathe spoke directly with project management here and collaborated on network cabling and location of all the necessary points, ”she says.
Also secured against excavators
Tanum shows us around the premises, and in the corridors we pass some wireless access points discreetly placed in the ceiling. Behind a door in the corridor outside the meeting rooms are two of a total of five switches, and the equipment - all from Cisco Meraki - is labeled as Braathes property.
Namely, the network is provided as a service, a lease there Braathe provides for equipment, operation and maintenance of the network.
Down in the basement, Tanum shows a cupboard where one of two internet lines enters the building, and in the rack we observe the firewall, also the one marked with Braathe .
- A similar closet is located on the other side of the building, with an internet line added. If anyone should dig over the fiber cable out in the street on this side, we have the other line to fall back on, Tanum says.
For line breaks and downtime will be serious for a law firm as well, and CEO Terje Gundersen emphasizes that a stable and secure network solution is business critical:
In the four-story building in Drammen, the law firm Svensson Nøkleby has chosen to rent the network as a service from Braathe. (Photo: Delta V)
Suitable for anyone with internet access
The great advantage of networking as a service lies in predictable costs and scalability.
- You can shop for equipment yourself, but then you have to take into account what will happen in the future. You must pre-budget future growth if you believe your business will grow. With networking as a service, you don't have to think about what will happen in two or three years, as you can easily scale up with multiple switches and multiple access points when the need arises. Or if you have to downsize and maybe rent out parts of the room, then we come and pick down what you no longer need. With us you pay a fixed price per product per month, without binding time, and that includes the equipment, license, monitoring, operation, adjustments and more, says Tor Jahren in Braathe.
Braathe delivers exclusively Cisco Meraki network products. Jahren cites an example of why these products make it affordable to operate the networks to a large number of customers:
- We have had customers where an employee has brought their own access point from home, then it stands there as a router and a DHCP, and then there are IP conflicts and more. The Meraki switch then has a built-in cable tester and the ability to stop a single port without having to run any deep network analysis. The products make it quick and easy for an administrator to gain an overview and control over the network, he says.
Same network in all offices
The equipment and solutions at Svensson Nøkleby belong to the latter category. The law firm belongs to Eurojuris Norge, an association of 17 independent law firms, all of which have networks as a service from Braathe .
- Everything is set up so that the network at all Eurojuris offices is the same. If one of our lawyers has a lawsuit in Bergen and needs to work at the Eurojuris office there, no other password or configuration is needed than here with us in Drammen, Tanum says.
The real difference, however, is the quality of the network service.
- I say we have taken seven miles in terms of capacity, but also competence. With what we have done now, we have gained the expertise of one supplier, and everything has become incredibly much more professionalized than we previously had, ”says Gundersen.
To Svensson Nøkleby has Braathe delivered a total of 15 wireless access points from Cisco Meraki. All are discreetly mounted in the ceiling. (Photo: Delta V)
At Svensson Nøkleby, there are no longer any permanent IT people to find in the office. Instead, it is the administration manager Tanum who is the link between the users and Braathe .
- It is very comfortable to have one place to call if something should happen, be it the wired or the wireless network, instead of having to deal with multiple providers. Braathe have also been good at speaking a language that those of us who are not in the IT industry understand. It has given us peace of mind, not only that everything works, but also that the invoice matches the products we actually rent, concludes Tanum.
