Law Firm Taps Cisco Quad to Unify Global Workforce

Minter Ellison, an Australian law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions and telecommunications law, has been grappling
with a question facing many enterprises.

How to get its worldwide staff to communicate and share knowledge more efficiently, and thereby better serve clients?

With 2,500 total staff, 290 partners and 1,000 lawyers working in Australia (six offices), Hong Kong, the People’s Republic
of China, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, Minter Ellison has a far-flung workforce.

The firm instills a strategy it calls “One Firm”, a commitment that clients will get the best lawyers at hand with the appropriate
expertise wherever in the world they may be. To that end, Minter Ellison has invested heavily in Cisco technologies — including
the new social networking site Quad — so that its staff can form groups and quickly tap into each other’s expertise across
industries and time zones via Web teleconferences and social networking.

Cisco Quad, which merges Facebook-like profile pages and real-time communication features with business apps and document
and content management systems, will be an adjustment for Minter Ellison’s workforce, says CIO Peter Westerveld.

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“Social networking in a business setting is fairly new for most employees,” he says.

But it’s a transition that will be aided by the fact that most people use Facebook, Twitter and Skype in their personal lives.

“People are familiar with these technologies and how they work. So the take-up is mostly seamless. There’s not a need for
much training or explanation of the concepts.”

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While Minter Ellison has been a Cisco VoIP (voice over IP) customer for many years, the firm has recently turned up the dial
on its investment in Cisco’s unified communications products to facilitate worldwide employee collaboration.

The UC technologies in Minter Ellison’s stable include:

Cisco Telepresence for high-definition video and audio for virtual meetings.

Cisco WebEx meetings to connect employees and clients with live, interactive audio, data and video conferencing.

Cisco Unified Computing System data center platform for networking and storage access, where the firm has virtualized 85 percent
of its business, legal and CRM applications and has also used it to roll out UC services such as Cisco WebEx live meetings.

Cisco Quad, Cisco’s new “Facebook for the Enterprise”, which Minter Ellison has pilot tested and is now deploying for all
employees.

The last piece of the puzzle, Quad, is a major facet of Minter Ellison’s “One Firm” initiative to keep lawyers collaborating
on the Web, says Westerveld. He adds that Cisco Quad’s business-grade security features that hide and protect sensitive information
and control who can view certain docs as well as the ability to integrate other technologies are what sold him on the product
over offerings from Microsoft (SharePoint) and IBM (Lotus Sametime).

“Quad complements social networking very well with Cisco telepresence and WebEx tools as well as Microsoft Office docs and
Outlook e-mail,” he says.

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Teen arrested for fake Facebook account of Chief Minister

Bhopal:  A teenage boy was arrested by the police from Indore district for allegedly creating a fake profile of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on popular social networking site Facebook and uploading cartoons and controversial photos on it.

The matter came to light sometime back and Chouhan had himself filed a complaint in this regard with the police for investigating the matter, Bhopal’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Adarsh Katiyar said.

A police team had then contacted Facebook’s India office on the issue, but when they did not reveal any information citing privacy policies of the social networking site, Bhopal police sought the help of Interpol following which the site’s head office informed that it was created at an Indore-based cyber cafe situated in the Malharganj area of the city.

Police then zeroed on the cafe and arrested the teenager, a student of Class XII yesterday, he said. Since the boy was a minor, his name is not being revealed.

The boy was brought to Bhopal and a case under various sections of the cyber laws was registered against him, Katiyar said.

Police sources said some of the photographs and cartoons on the profile are communal in nature while others make fun of Prime Minister and senior Congress leaders.

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