Axceler ControlPoint Success Story

Hogan & Hartson 

The Business Challenge

Since its founding more than 100 years ago, Hogan & Hartson has grown into a major international law firm, with over 1,100 lawyers practicing in 27 offices around the globe. During the last century, the firm's communication and collaboration challenges have grown in step with its own expansion and the ceaseless advance of technology. Today, Hogan & Hartson uses SharePoint as a platform for sharing information, coordinating work, and delivering timely, critical data to its lawyers and staff around the world.

Ajay Wanchoo, Director of Solutions Architecture and Development at Hogan, leads a development team that maintains the SharePoint infrastructure, establishes design standards, and creates the templates and web parts used by content owners and site administrators across the firm. Given Hogan & Hartson's global presence, Wanchoo faces the challenge of gaining a single point of visibility and control for the SharePoint environment.  "I need a strong reporting capability in order to see what is going on at any point in time, and to assess trends over time," Wanchoo says.

The Axceler Solution

To meet Hogan's needs, Wanchoo chose Axceler's ControlPoint to administer their SharePoint farm. Among the prime reasons: he liked ControlPoint's granularity. "We really liked the idea of having the ability to control all of the elements in our SharePoint environment. Yes, we like to see things at a high level, but we also like to be able to drill-down to see the detail." They also chose ControlPoint for its general reporting and site-migration capabilities.

Moving Forward –
Taking Advantage of ControlPoint

Wanchoo values the at-a-glance information he can get with ControlPoint. "Storage analysis is particularly useful," he said. "Another plus for us is being able to see where web parts are being used, and who's using them. We do a lot of custom development, so being able to keep track of this is very important for us." Wanchoo also values the ability to provide selective access to the sub-sites, so that personnel can monitor the activity in their areas.  "Being able to pick and choose who can do what gives us the best of both worlds. We get to maintain central control where needed, yet still empower local managers to better take care of their own sub-sites."

Results

"From the reporting perspective alone, ControlPoint has really been a time saver for us," noted Wanchoo. The SharePoint system administrator on his team uses ControlPoint regularly to replicate permissions and do cleanups. "We only have one SharePoint administrator," Wanchoo added, "And from a pure productivity standpoint, being able to easily and efficiently take care of these tasks has truly enabled us to work more effectively. As you can imagine, our environment is very fast-paced and demanding, so this is a major benefit for us."

Overall, ControlPoint is proving highly beneficial to Wanchoo and his team. "If I were to put my marketing hat on," he said, "I'd have to say that ControlPoint is a fabulous tool for SharePoint administration. It really will simplify things for you, no matter what your SharePoint environment is. It's really no exaggeration to say that selecting ControlPoint is a big no brainer."