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Protection of corporate, client information seen as key, with goal of moving toward cost-effective "zero-time recovery" from IT disasters
08.22.06
ORLANDO, FL. - Unitrends™ (www.unitrends.com), dedicated to making IT disasters of all types insignificant events at small and mid-sized enterprises, today announced a corporate initiative, aimed at providing a comprehensive, all-inclusive range of disaster recovery offerings to medium-sized law firms for complete system recovery. In doing so, the company said it is focused on delivering its integrated Rapid Recovery™ appliances to help those firms, traditionally underserved by technology vendors, easily address business continuity concerns as well as enable the availability and security of client documents, such as billing and receipts, document management, client communications and more.
The announcement was made today at the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), meeting here in Orlando, Florida.
While most legal firms in the AMLaw 100 have been able to afford and have implemented complete disaster recovery systems, those capabilities have been largely outside the budgetary reach of middle-tier law firms, forcing them to rely on slower, outmoded systems, like tape and software solutions, to protect their practice-critical systems and documents, and to restore them when failures occur. In a recent ALM/Millward Brown study on Law Firm Technology, medium-sized law firms cited improved business continuity as their top concern by a significant margin. The study goes on to note that these same firms will spend an average of more than $150,000 this year to improve their computer systems and networks, trying to keep pace with the explosive growth in the amount of information being managed, due to organic and acquisition growth, additional complexities in legal requirements and an ever-changing regulatory compliance landscape.
Restoring the information and systems needed for law firms to be back in business can take hours or even several days, costing those firm precious time and revenue, and endangering their capability to deliver the full and prompt range of services their clients demand. This "time to recovery" can be exacerbated in environments where multiple operating systems are being used as well as where multiple software applications and hardware are stitched together.
"I could not restore my critical business servers within the time required. I needed a solution to make certain our systems were quickly recoverable," said Prashanth Malur, Network Architect at Dow Lohnes, a mid-sized law firm with offices in Washington, DC and Atlanta. Malur consulted with Unitrends experts, and implemented a Rapid Recovery system with disk-based storage, giving Dow Lohnes both onsite and offsite disaster recovery capability.
"It was a waste of time and money to try and vault offsite with other vendors," Malur said. "Costs were exorbitant, and they couldn't deliver as promised. Only Unitrends delivered a fully integrated high-performance system, with full capabilities to meet our DR requirements, at a cost that is three time less than other vendors we tested." He also noted that Unitrends' disk-to-disk backup was ten times faster.
Unitrends' Rapid Recovery appliances are ideally suited to the needs of mid-tier law firms, with the ability to protect from several hundred gigabytes up to 50 terabytes of user data, and seamlessly integrating the technology needed for full-scale disaster recovery, including:
- High-speed, disk-based data protection
- Data backup software
- High performance data compression
- Support across more than 25 operating systems
- Point-in-time recovery
- Electronic data vaulting for offsite protection
- OS, application and file state imaging
- Application-specific continuous protection (e.g., Exchange) support
"Law firms are unique in that they face the pressure to comply with regulations and execute a wide range of ongoing practice aspects," said Sterling Wharton, Unitrends' President and Chief Executive Officer. "These firms are responsible for millions of documents, with hundreds of clients and millions of dollars depending on them. They simply cannot be down for significant periods of time or without access to these systems and applications. Unitrends' focus on delivering an integrated system to middle-tier law firms is consistent with our corporate mission; we want to make it possible for companies to regard IT disasters, both major and everyday, as minor problems that can be solved quickly and efficiently."
More information about Unitrends' legal initiative, and the advantages its Rapid Recovery appliances offer mid-tier law firms, is available at www.unitrends.com/solutions/legal.htm.
About Unitrends
Unitrends is the industry leader in making IT disasters insignificant events at small and mid-sized enterprises, and a pioneer in delivering Rapid Business System Recovery solutions to the market. Unitrends' full line of integrated data and system protection appliances provide powerful backup and recovery capabilities, helping firms safeguard the information and operating systems that keep them in business. More information on Unitrends is available from the company's website, www.unitrends.com or by calling +1.803.454.0300.
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