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Putting in the Pipes
Derek Smith remembers how the work culture changed at Paul Hastings after the firm embarked on its global expansion.
"When I first started," Smith recalls, "5:30 was 'Whew.' That was the FedEx cutoff. Everyone rushed up to then. Then there was a great sense of relief. That's history. There's no cutoff anymore."
When Wong took over as CIO, he needed to make sure that the IT department would be able to keep up with the firm's rapid growth plans.
"My first priority was to build an organization that could support a demanding business model 24 by 7," Wong says. "The infrastructure was doing what it was supposed to, but we put in major upgrades."
A project for a client might involve teams of lawyers around the world, all working punishing hours. For example, when the firm put together a $440-million joint venture called Helio for Korea's SK Telecom and Atlanta-based EarthLink, the undertaking roped in attorneys from the firm's offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Hong Kong.
"It's extremely difficult to have even a minute of downtime in the legal business," Wong says. "We schedule downtime, but it's a window of a couple hours per month. That's a very small window for an operation of this complexity."
To meet those needs, the firm's network infrastructure went from a single wire to a triple-redundant big pipe: a dual layer Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) system. Wong also added a network operations center with a round-the-clock help desk.
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