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Business Continuity - Disaster Prevention
 |  All of the above words are used at different times to refer to the plans that law firms may have (or may not have) to ensure that they can recover their systems in the event of a catastrophic event. Such an event may range from a hard drive failure to a building fire that destroys all computer and paper records.
What is your firm's plan to respond to an event that causes the loss of data or entire systems?
Ask yourself these questions:
Q. If the building caught fire and your staff could not get back into the building for several days, would you know who to contact or what to do about it?
Q. If all systems were lost in a building fire, could you restore all desktops and critical systems with operating system licences, application software licences, virus software, firewalls, email, procedures and other data?
Q. If your server failed, how long would it take to replace it and restore the software and data?
Q. Has your firm done a trial run of its disaster recovery and system restoration plan lately?
Q. Has your firm ever had an independent review of its backup, restore and business continuity plan?
Q. If your office was evacuated on 1 minutes notice, and staff could not regain access for several days, what would you do?
If you are uncertain about the options available to you, Locus can help. For starters, the Locus Practice Management Software provides comprehensive processes and information to assist your firm to ensure that a regular backup is done and that the backup is verified. Yes, verified!.
The process of verifying a backup is critical. It confirms that if you need to use the backup tape that it will work when you need it. You would be surprised at the number of organisations that have diligently done their backups every night only to find out at the worst possible time that the backup tape was faulty. You must verify your backups!
IntegrITy Server
Another option available is the Locus IntegrITy Server. Locus developed this solution to remove the finger pointing from the support of your firm's practice management server.
IntegrITy Server uses Locus' special Linux Control Software to eliminate the need for Windows licences on the server and to put in place automated preventive maintenance, system backup and restoration processes. IntegrITy Server combines advanced software, operating system and maintenance tools to provide superior speed, performance and reliability.
IntegrITy Server provides daily email reporting on system health and support for a fixed annual fee. There is no more finger-pointing over who should fix problems in the unlikely event that they should occur. If there is a fire or hardware failure, you simply put the IntegrITy Server CD into a new server and you can run up a complete new system in a few hours. 40 large and small law firms now use IntegrITy Server to achieve the highest levels of preventive maintenance and a low total cost of ownership.
War Stories
A Locus client with 100 staff had a disaster. Their old Sun Server running Unix had failed. They had been off the air for more than 24 hours. Their technical consultant had cancelled their Sun support agreement on the old machine and it was going to cost thousands to get the hardware vendor to visit their office to look at the server. Because of the age of the machine there could be no guarantee it could be fixed.
At 5.00pm on Wednesday, the client called Locus' Helpline to advise of the hardware failure and asked for help. At 8.30am the next morning, the client gave their backup tapes to Locus staff. One of the backup tapes was corrupted but Locus Consultants managed to retrieve the data from another tape and restore it. By lunchtime that day, Locus had provided a brand new server and installed the IntegrITy Server configuration with operating system, application software and restored data. The server was acquired by Locus, delivered to the client site (an hour's drive from the CBD) and was mapped into the client's network. They were trading by 2.00pm.
The client went from complete server failure to new hardware and restored system in half a working day. If they had been using the IntegrITy Server in the first place, they would have been back on the air sooner.
Locus IntegrITy Server users enjoy peace of mind from having the most reliable practice management system available and a disaster prevention plan that reduces technical support staff costs.  back to News and Events
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