It was 77 years ago that Philadelphia lawyer Myron Jacoby started Philadelphia Construction Lawyers, a small law firm now known as Jacoby Donner P.C. Since its origins practicing construction law, the firm has expanded into areas such as business law, real estate, employment and labor law, estate planning and administration, and the law of associations and trade organizations.

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While successful, the firm only recently decided it needed to call upon managed IT and professional services provider Mindshift Technologies to help convert the Macintosh platform it'd been using for years to one using Microsoft applications.

Trish See

"The need for our change was predicated by the industry/business community using more Microsoft applications that were not compatible with the Apple environment," explains firm administrator Trish See. "As the hardware reached the end of the life cycle, the question was to either buy all new [Macintosh computers] and continue down that path or to use that money to convert to PCs.

"In addition, due to the ever-changing software upgrades and need for software compatibility, we felt the need to move to Microsoft applications. And finally, we did not want to continue the cycle of every four to five years having to rebuild the infrastructure of our system."

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Jacoby Donner decided to move to a hosted solution from Network Alternatives called OASIS, appreciating the additional security and backup features provided with that platform, that was provided by Mindshift.

According to See, the vendor provided much-needed assistance during the transition. "In doing our research and planning for our upgrade, Mindshift was able to provide us the necessary information, references, and solution that fit our needs," she says. "We interviewed with several other groups that provide some of the same services, but liked the Mindshift group and philosophy better than the others we spoke to and that bid for the work."

Once Jacoby Donner made the decision to move to Mindshift, its engineers did all the testing and conversion of data and systems -- "with very little work/effort needed from us," says See, who adds that the company was highly detailed in the documentation that was used for training.