The network transformation, delivered by AN Security, was undertaken as Trowers & Hamlins reduced its primary office and datacentre footprint and relocated core datacentre services to a dedicated co-location facility.

The firm, which has more than 170 partners and over 1,000 employees across the UK, Middle East and Asia, wanted to use the move to simplify its infrastructure, improve resilience and provide greater capacity for remote workers, branch offices and cloud-connected services.

Its existing architecture consisted of two separate datacentre networks, with a limited number of networks stretched between them. Trowers & Hamlins wanted to replace this with a single logical datacentre architecture that could better support workload mobility and disaster recovery.

Strengthening overall resilience

AN Security designed and implemented the new architecture, strengthening resilience across branch office connectivity, remote user access, core security services and datacentre networking.

The project also addressed planned downtime associated with infrastructure maintenance. Previously, routine security updates and maintenance could require outages and approved maintenance windows. The new architecture allows critical security updates to be applied while services remain available, enabling the IT team to respond more quickly to emerging vulnerabilities.

Anthony Mann, Infrastructure Manager at Trowers & Hamlins, said: “Resilience and availability are critical for us because our people need reliable access to systems and services wherever they are working. As our infrastructure requirements evolved, we wanted to create an environment that would reduce complexity, strengthen business continuity and give us greater flexibility for the future.

“Moving our datacentre services gave us an opportunity to rethink the underlying architecture rather than simply replicate what we had before. Working with AN Security, we were able to take a phased approach to the transformation, validating the new environment ahead of the physical move and reducing the risk around the migration.

We now have a more resilient and scalable network that is simpler for our IT team to manage, while also allowing us to carry out critical security updates without disrupting services for users.”

Two phase project

To reduce migration risk, AN Security divided the programme into two phases rather than carrying out the architectural transformation at the same time as the physical datacentre relocation.

The new architecture was deployed and validated first, with detailed migration plans and runbooks agreed between AN Security, the law firm’s internal IT teams and specialist third-party providers.

AN Security then provided support during the physical relocation of infrastructure to the new co-location facility.

The migration was completed with minimal disruption to business operations, with only minor issues encountered and resolved during the move.

The project has also increased network capacity and simplified infrastructure management through centralised configuration, reduced duplication and standardised branch office deployments.

More than 750 users access services remotely through Trowers & Hamlins’ application delivery platform. The redesigned environment provides greater availability for remote access services alongside improved branch connectivity and increased capacity to support future growth.

The latest project builds on a relationship between Trowers & Hamlins and AN Security spanning more than seven years. AN Security has previously supported the law firm’s global SD-WAN rollout, helping modernise connectivity across its international offices and reduce reliance on legacy WAN technologies.