>> live from Miami Beach, Florida It's the que covering demon 2019. Brought to you, by the way. >> Welcome back to Miami. Everybody watching the Cube, The leader in live tech coverage. This is Day two of the mon 2019 3 cubes. Third year at V mon, We did New Orleans. We did Chicago last year. Course here at the Fountain Blue in Miami. Great venue for an event like this. I'm Dave a lot. It was my co host, Peter Burroughs. Abba Dabbas. Eye is Adi is here. He's the head of a Charles Russell speech. Liza London based law firm. How about great. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. Thankyou. So you tell us about this judge. Interesting name. Charles Russell. Speech lease. It was a merger of two firms, Right. Tell us how it all came about. >> Back in 2,014 Charles, loss of species performed for a merger between two different companies. Charles docile and speaks Lee Burcham from a 90 perspective. That was very interesting for the two departments coming together s So we have a limited time period where we had to merge these two companies Two different systems different data centers, different data sets. So it was formed by emerging back in 2,014 for five years on way here today >> that we see this a lot, you know, Emanate goes down. The acquiring company of this sounds like it was a merger. You know, they sort of battle. Okay, who's going toe? Really? Which framework is going to win? Because I'm sure had that conversation. But so to take us through that merger, what it entailed what? What the scenario looked like and how you plan for it. Sure. >> So I was part of the Charles. Also legacy Charles Russell team on, then obviously speaks about. Some had their own team as well. So initially, when we first found out about the merger, it was essential for the two teams to get together to work out. Okay, What systems? You have free mail. What systems you have for document management system playing trump cards. Which is who's got the best system and which way do we wantto move forward? A little. >> Ah, >> so but being a law firm, most law firms around the world and in the UK especially used the same types of software so essentially that from that perspective it was It was it was quite simple. But then way had to work out. How do we How do we go forward with this? Because two different headquarters in the London area. Which office do we move into? Sort of logistics around that. Can we fit in pre merger? It was six. Charles Lawson had sickle. Roughly 600 people, especially birds, had roughly 500 people. So pretty comparable. Yeah, yeah. So working out space logistics was was an issues >> making that even even more complicated, right? Yeah. >> One of the things that's interesting about a law firm, like versus a traditional manufacturer or AW financial services firm that has a lot of very fast right writing systems and have to scale on those lines is a law firms feature very complex dogs, very complex in from out of files, a lot of files that are written. But at the same time, you have to be repurposed to a lot of different work flows very sensitive to external contingent regulatory change. And so you have all of that happening, especially, I mean, two years ago from now on MySpace steak, and it was you're getting into brexit stuff, too, so that also had to be a source of uncertainty. So how has it been combining external regulatory issues the way that technology is being used in law firms and some of the new work clothes that you guys trying to support? And then adding, On top of that, the complexity of bringing these two firm GPR >> GPO itself was It was a year old project for us on. Obviously, we've got offices. The Middle East, but obviously is in the Far East on DH in Central Europe has well, so data logistics or where it sits, is an issue for us as well. So GDP, ours being a big project for us in terms of the merger itself. It was it was very, very difficult for the two I T departments to come together on actually work out. How how do we go to one unified systems? Essentially one doctor man, just in one email system. All of that took a lot of plan in law project management on essentially within the legal press itself. We got doubted in the time frames that we had that we can achieve it on within. I think It was 18 month period. We had merged order, different systems and various offices because speech the Bertram and Time is what I had. Offices in Zurich and Geneva were to merge with different offices together as well. So it was. It was a big, big task for the i T department on the firm itself. >> They're very tight migration deadlines. And and as you started to approach those deadlines you had to worry about, Okay, When we're going to cut over, how do we avoid downtime? How do we make sure that we don't? You know, I have bad data, data, corruption and the like. So how did you plan for that? And how did it go? >> So wait, we're here. C'mon on DH. Veen was It was it was a big part of our migration process. So where we had two different parts of the business Different storage systems, Different actualization system's way used to mean a CZ. The middleman basically, to my great data, from one day to center to another, using swink it. So where there was a large amount of terabytes and terabytes, amount of data way had swing kit available to us using team were able to be to be essentially a love the environments into the swing care and then bring them over to the other side of the business. And vain was essentially part on on top of that, making sure that the data that we were coming that will bring in a cross is true and not corrupt on DH, that using some of their technology is sure backups and stuff like that really, really was essential to, you know, do migration going well >> And was was Wien installed and both organizations at the time? Or was that something that you had to sort of redeploy? >> And yeah, So Legacy Charles also had way was actually myself going back probably eight years ago. Version For a time, I think team had 20,000 customers. So to here >> there were version 10 now 33 150 >> 1,001,000, 4,000 month. >> That makes me proud that we invested in vain when we did good car. So yeah, it was It was a good call from us, and essentially three other side of the business did not have. But then we just wait. Expanded our Venus State to look at both sides and then bring him across on. And then, ever since then, we've grown our vamos state across the world, across all of officers. So >> So how did you do that? So that was that was another migration that had to occur. And did you? You kind of do those simultaneously. Did you do the theme of migration first, and then bring the two systems together? >> Do you seem to do Stouffer special sauce in the migration? >> Yeah. So Veen was essentially a tool that we used to my great data sensors from one data center to another using their backup technology using their replication technology, we were able to replicate all of one side's virtual machines to the other. And then that gave us that gave us the flexibility as well. When when we had the limited down time periods that we've had, they give us the flexibility to actually Circe the business is during these particular ours. We're not gonna be able to You're not gonna have access to these systems because we're going to bring up systems from point A to point B. So veen was essential to them if >> you had to do it over again. If he had a mulligan, what would you have done differently? What what advice might you give to somebody who's trying to go through a similar migration? >> I would say Give your partners and lawyers more realistic time. Pray the time frame that we would get. >> Or don't let them give you an unrealistic time for him. >> Exactly. Yeah, so says ensured that the amount of work it's it's not just day to itself. You know, we're talking network and we're talking security. We're talking, you know, to to similar sized companies coming together. We were very, very limited time frame, consolidating all of their systems into one which is essential for the two parts of the business to collaborate together because, you know, way could have taken our time. We could have got to take this free four years a CE, far as we're concerned. But the fact that we did do it in such a quick time for him and that business to parts of the business from Day one can collaborate much better with each other. So >> we talked a lot about digital business transformation and you know, our approach or our observations on the digital business transformations, the process by which you altar and change your firm to re institutionalize the work. Change your game. Tomato Grover. All governments model as you use data as an asset, so that's affecting every firm everywhere. How's it affecting a law firm and you know your law from specifically on? How is that going to change your stance in your approach to data protection >> Data is incredibly important to unlawful. A zit is to most most organizations, but in terms of, you know, one of one of the things that's quite important in terms of law firms. We work with the financial institutions, so we held information by that. We hold personal data way hold all times of information. Charles Oscar speech leads works with Aware is of law apart from Kunal. So the areas of law that they worked with his vast in terms of the amount of data that we hold and essentially I mean, for us data is the most important thing that runs the firm and having visibility tow our data. How do we How do we work that data? How do we then market based on the data that we have? How do we market ourselves from that data. You know, there might be one area the business that's dealing with a family issue, family law. But then, you know that that could correspond with the litigation issue. You know, how do we work that data? To be to be an advancing to our businesses is extremely important. For >> what? What do you think of the announcements this week? I'm kind of curious. I was liketo ask the practitioners of what they think about. You know what was announced. You had, uh, well, you had the ve made $1,000,000,000. That's kind of fun and cool, but But you had the with the program, which was kind of interesting. The whole ap I look the beam availability orchestrator, where they're really talking about recovering from backups as a host that needed to recover from, you know, a replicated instance. You know, some of the automated testing stuff was kind of interesting. They talked about dynamic documentation, things you saw this week that you'll actually go back and say, Hey, I can apply that to solve a problem. Sure. >> So, essentially, I think I've been a really good question is very relevant to us many of not just ourselves law firm but many of the other law firms around the world are now looking at cloud based services now for us. I mean, this was a big thing five years ago way you know, everyone was talking about public clouds. Us. We're now we're now looking clouds and where basically, we've bean pushed by the vendors themselves to go towards cloudlike Citrix, for example. Their licensing model was based around their services. So is Microsoft in Mike's off? You don't you don't really have, you know, exchange anymore. Within premises you have off 365 A lot of the SAS applications are moving toward the cloud on DH. What wrote me? I had to say doing the keynote in regards to act, too. And how team are trying to be the visionaries in terms of look at that cloud is their next big thing for the next 10 years, offering often a crucial and for businesses like ours who have limited exposure to cloud technologies limited understanding, essentially having a tool that could migrate from one cloud to another. It's fantastic, you know, we've offered, you know I've spoken to, obviously are United directors around the other law firms where I wanted to have gone to the public cloud. But they don't know how to come back in and having a tall that essentially gives you that flexibility to bring it back in house to go form a ws to zoo. Or if there's a particular assess application, for example, that piers better with a W s. But you've got your other application that piers with that particular application is your Why would you want to have in the door? You'll probably want to move into a W eso for us, I think. What? The message coming out of'em on this year has bean really, really helpful for us. >> So So when you started with theme, they had it said 20,000 custom You like the 20001st customer on DIT was coincided with the virtual ization, you know, craze. Do you feel like the team knowing what you know about them, you have a lot of experience with them Consort of Replicate that success in this town intendant and in Act two, >> I think when I first looked at them, Wow, this is really, really simple. It's a bit like an iPhone. You know you given iPhone to your grandmother or to your children, and they have to play with it. And I see the beam as an intuitive piece of software that easy fighting professionals to get on with it, as their slogan said a few years ago. It just works. It does just work. Wear were great advocates of him. It's worked wonders for us. We've acquired smaller businesses using we've managed companies using and when I see you know, when you go to the sessions and you see the intelligence behind their thinking, I think going back to your question I think Wei si oui, si, vamos a strategic partner for us when we see their vision and we believe in their vision, and I think what they're doing in terms of what they working on next few years, I think we're well favor there, and I think, you know, essentially, that's where the most of their business is going to come from, >> where you sit down with, you know, rat mayor over over vodka and he says, Tell me the one thing I could do to make your life you know, easier, better you can't say cut prices s a hellhole. But what would you advise him to >> make my life better >> other than Jim instead of >> yeah, eyes that >> would make you crazy. >> So in terms of a zoo, a technology, >> your business relationship or something, she'd like to see them do that would. I >> think in terms of mergers and acquiring companies, seen license rentals will be a good thing. I know, I know. They give you a valuation license keys, and that's something that you can use. So, for example, if we were to acquire a company that has hundreds of servers and PM's having license rentals for a period of time, able >> to spin it up and spin it down actually allowed >> Exactly. Yeah, that would be an advantage. I think in terms of what you know what they're doing in the marketplace, and a lot of law firms use him. I feel I can't do any more than they are doing now. And in all the years that we've used to be my fingers on eight years now, but we've only had one serious problem, and the way they got that problem, you know the way, the way they communicated to reverse the way they a lot of different teams across the the Europe and the US go involved. I think, you know, in terms of service, in terms of software, in terms of what they what they do for us. I don't think there's anything more to add. Teoh. Right? Maia's vision. >> That's great for their custom of it. Well, thanks so much for coming on. The Cube is not heavy. Really? Thank you very much. You're welcome to keep it right there, buddy Peter, and I'll be back with our next guests right after this short break. We're live from Miami at the front of Blue Hotel. You're watching the Cube from Vienna on 2019 right back.