Simply Having a Backup Solution Doesn’t Mean Your Firm Won’t Suffer Downtime

When we speak with law firms who are interested in working with us to handle their IT, one of the first questions we ask is about their backup solution. All too often they had one in place at some point, but no one monitors it and the system has not been successfully backed up in a long time. At this point, we generally stop talking about any other work and focus on getting a complete backup of the system just in case. Having a backup of your system is important and it will keep you from ever losing your data, especially with our cloud backup. On the other hand, just because you have a backup doesn’t mean that if your server crashes or dies you won’t suffer downtime. You have to make sure that there is an understanding between you and your IT provider on how long you can expect to be down in case of a disaster. If a week is not good enough, you then have to invest in additional disaster recovery solutions to lower that time into something a bit more acceptable.

Think of it this way, if the backup only takes care of the data on the server and the server dies, your data is secure, but no one can work. A proper disaster recovery solution deals with all these issues and decreases your firms downtime. Obviously the best disaster recovery solutions offer a maximum of 15 minutes of downtime or even zero downtime but they aren’t cheap. We work with solutions that replicate your office server(s) to a cloud server. In case of a disaster, the mirrored image of the office server is automatically deployed into the cloud, fully updated with the latest file and database changes. We also offer cloud desktops so that key people can work during this time. We can offer full office remote access, but the cloud costs get to be a little ridiculous with large numbers of cloud desktops. This is why we try to control client spending and offer 2 or 3 cloud workstations that users can share. For a typical law office, we find that 1 to 5 cloud workstations work fine during disasters. Keep in mind that this solution offers you the option to work. During a disaster not all your attorneys will be able to work, which is also why we limit the amount of cloud workstations.

With a deployable cloud solution like this coupled with top notch cloud services from New Jersey’s largest and most reliable data center (they never lost power or internet during hurricane Sandy) we feel that we have brought downtime to zero. This solution offers your firm a quick and easy cloud solution so key attorneys can continue to work and bill with access to firm data with no restrictions. If your not sure if your firm is covered by a serious backup solution, give us a call. Even if your firm currently runs successful backups but your still worried about downtime, give us a call for pricing. Your backup will not stop downtime, a disaster recovery solution will.