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Lovetts Solicitors
Microsoft Exchange & Intune Migration Case Study
Lovetts Solicitors is a specialist UK and international business debt collection and recovery law firm, based in Guildford, Surrey. With over 30 years’ experience, Lovetts handles more than 90,000 cases and recovers in excess of £78 million a year on behalf of its clients, supported by a team of around 30 staff. As a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and trusted with large volumes of sensitive client and debtor data, Lovetts needed its underlying technology to be every bit as dependable as its legal service.
“The migration to Exchange Online and Intune was a big step for us, and Pro Drive IT made sure it was done properly rather than quickly. Having an experienced partner manage the technical detail meant my team could stay focused on supporting our fee earners, while still ending up with a modern, more resilient platform.” – Andrew Dancy, IT Director, Lovetts Solicitors
KEY SOLUTIONS
- Microsoft 365 cloud Intune and Entra ID – to provide cloud email, identity management and device deployment
THE CHALLENGES
Lovetts’ email was hosted on an on-premise Microsoft Exchange server that was approaching the end of Microsoft’s support lifecycle. Continuing to run and maintain this infrastructure would have required a costly server upgrade project in its own right, while also leaving the firm reliant on a separate disaster recovery site for its Exchange environment.
Lovetts’ in house IT team was already carrying a high day to day workload and recognised that taking on a migration project of this scale themselves would be a significant distraction from critical business as usual support. As a firm handling sensitive client and debtor data at scale, Lovetts also wanted assurance that any new environment would be configured against recognised security standards from day one and wanted to derisk the project by bringing in specialist external expertise rather than tackling it internally.
THE APPROACH
Pro Drive IT delivered a comprehensive Microsoft Azure cloud migration project, replacing all legacy servers with modern cloud hosted infrastructure. We built and configured servers in Azure to host the core Digita platform, migrated seven key business applications, and implemented Azure Virtual Desktop for secure remote access.
Legacy file data was archived and made accessible via SharePoint, while computers were reconfigured to simplify user access and remove outdated software. Enhanced security was achieved through the advanced protection provided by Pro Drive’s ‘secure’ cyber security package. The project was delivered in phases with clear milestones and coordination with software suppliers to ensure minimal disruption.
THE RESULTS
A formal review at the end of the project confirmed that everything Lovetts had asked for had been delivered:
- No loss of data: Every staff mailbox was successfully moved across with no loss of data.
- Time freed up for internal IT team: Lovetts no longer needs to spend time and money keeping an old email server running and secure.
- Improved disaster recovery resilience: the firm’s ability to recover quickly should anything ever go wrong, removing the need for a separate backup Exchange server.
- Modernising IT systems: Moving to the cloud gives Lovetts a modern, flexible platform to build on, opening the door to time-saving productivity and AI-powered tools in future.
- No business interruption: Bringing in a trusted external partner meant Lovetts’ own IT team could stay focused on supporting fee earners day to day, rather than being tied up running a complex project themselves.