Barristers in Northern Ireland are benefitting from more reliable and secure email after The Bar Library switched to Google Apps with support from Ancoris. The solution allows The Bar Library to provide an email service to self-employed Barristers no matter which platform they use: Mac, Windows, Linux or Smartphone. Ancoris helped The Bar Library achieve a smooth transition to Google Mail, including the transfer of email archives which came from multiple client platforms and different environments.

Business Challenges

The Bar Library is an organisational base for Barristers in Northern Ireland. It provides a range of services, such as library access and IT support, to its 650 members who are self-employed Barristers located across Northern Ireland. These services are delivered by around 50 staff based at The Bar Library's premises in Belfast.

The Bar Library has offered an email service to its members for some years, using an in-house solution based around open source software running on Linux. With email use growing in popularity The Bar Library members were also looking for improved calender functionality and access to email on their smartphones as the existing solution was struggling to cope.

"It was proving very difficult to provide something that could be used on any of the platforms our members use, which include a range of mail clients running on Macs, Windows PCs and smartphones," explains Pete McEvoy, The Bar Library's IT manager. "I was also spending a lot of time maintaining the solution: updating spam filters, backing up email and adding storage."

In January 2010, The Bar Library decided to look for a replacement email solution. It had two key requirements: the solution had to be reliable and it had to be able to work with all the platforms used by The Bar Library's members. "We can't mandate policies as to what technologies the Barristers use," McEvoy points out. "We needed to be adaptable to their needs."

The Solution

After evaluating a range of solutions, including Google Apps for Business and Microsoft's hosted Exchange offering, The Bar Library chose Google Apps. A key reason was that Google Apps could best support the wide range of platforms used by The Bar Library's members. "We have a good percentage of Mac and even Linux users," McEvoy points out. "We felt the Microsoft solution was too Microsoft-centric and too biased towards Windows users, while  Google Apps had no such bias."

McEvoy was also confident that Google Apps could provide a secure solution for a user base handling sensitive information. "People have a natural reticence about storing information on the internet and sharing it with a third party, but Google has a strong track record when it comes to security. Its services comply with all the relevant legislation, such as the Data Protection Act, and they have far more expertise  than we do in managing email securely," McEvoy points out. "We were easily able to allay the concerns of our users about security."

Finally, McEvoy was impressed that Google takes data portability seriously, both in terms of bringing data into Google Apps and getting it out. "We had a number of users with ten years of email in various email clients and we needed to migrate all of that into Google Mail," he explains. "Google also has a team dedicated to getting customers' data out of Google Apps if you do want to move to a different service. I don't like vendor lock-in, so I was reassured by that."

To help with the migration, users moved across to Google Mail over the course of a single week, The Bar Library engaged Google partner Ancoris. "Ancoris provided expertise and a framework for migrating our user base away from its heterogeneous existing environment," McEvoy explains. "We only have a small number of IT staff here at The Bar Library, and we would have struggled with the migration without being able to draw on Ancoris’ experience in working with multiple environments or making use of their processes and tools for the migration. Although we carried out the actual migration ourselves, Ancoris had a consultant working very closely with us throughout, so that whenever we had any issues or were unsure about the next step, they were there to offer us advice and guidance. While Ancoris weren't actually on site with us, it felt like they were."

The Results

The Bar Library now has around 700 users on Google Mail, including Barristers and its own staff and McEvoy expects to add between 75 and 100 new Barristers to The Bar Library's user base each year. McEvoy is also promoting other elements of Google Apps to Barristers and is encouraging The Bar Library's own staff to move to using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office to take advantage of the online services provided with Google Apps to store all documents in the cloud.

McEvoy's enthusiasm for these other aspects of Google Apps reflects his satisfaction with the Google Mail solution. "It's very reliable," he says. "We've had next to no downtime in the nine months we've used it; the email has worked perfectly for everyone, no matter what platform they're using; and we've been able to integrate calendaring into the service we offer to members."

For the Barristers using Google Apps, a better quality service means they're not wasting time they could be spending on billable work on technology issues. McEvoy's own time has been freed up to focus on other issues. "I used to spend around half my time managing our old email system,  but I barely have to look at Google Apps. Most of the time I do spend is providing advice to users on how to get more out of it, rather than fixing things."

Looking to the future, McEvoy says The Bar Library hopes to roll out Google Voice when it is introduced into the UK. "We've looked at providing a Voice over IP service for our members in house, but we've held off due to not being able to find a single standard that would meet everyone's needs," he explains. "Google Voice would provide an ideal solution."

McEvoy's satisfaction with Google Apps extends to the ongoing support being provided by Ancoris. "Ancoris brings a wealth of experience and know exactly what they're talking about," he says. "They have great support systems in place, and they're always helpful, pleasant and responsive when we need their assistance."