Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity, policy control and archiving, announced that it partnered with Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson LLP’s (BSW), a prominent corporate defense law firm, to secure its business email operations and safeguard against downtime. With three offices located deep within a hurricane zone, Baton Rouge, Covington and New Orleans, the law firm needed to ensure it could provide services to its clients at all times – even in the event of a major storm.
“The fact of the matter is if your company’s communications infrastructure is down and you can’t communicate with your clients for 48 hours or longer, there is a good chance you will not come back online ever again,” said BSW IT Manager Luke Corley. “Compound the dangers of major hurricanes through the Gulf Coast with the fast-paced nature of a law firm, and it is fair to say that downtime of any sort simply is not an option for us.”
Hurricanes are a reality and a way of life in Louisiana. Hurricane Gustav most recently ripped through the area and inflicted millions of dollars worth of damage. BSW experienced the damaging effects of a major storm when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. The New Orleans office sustained heavy damage and the IT team had to remove the on-premise email solutions to ensure the law firm’s 160 users were able to get back up and running again. This event was a wake-up call to BSW and served as a motivating factor for the firm’s inquiry into cloud computing solutions.
“Advances in cloud computing have made on-premise appliances a thing of the past,” said Corley. “If a hurricane strikes, BSW operations will remain unaltered because they are not tied to on-premise applications. Clients can reach us and employees can log onto Web portals to send email and uphold our high level of client service. Mimecast had everything we needed to keep our corporate email up and running and even provided us with additional functionality we did not have such as enhanced eDiscovery, archiving, anti-spam, anti-virus, litigation hold and message retention.”
Before signing with Mimecast, BSW leveraged a host of on-premise solutions that were expensive to maintain and involved time-consuming administrative tasks. After an appliance failure, the law firm sought out Mimecast’s cost-effective and easy-to-use Software-as-a-Service solution because it guaranteed continuous uptime and housed the functionality needed to enhance user productivity while meeting legislative and regulatory compliance. Mimecast integrates seamlessly with the organization’s existing Microsoft Exchange systems, is highly scalable and enables quick search and retrieval of information – a major benefit in the extensively data-driven field of corporate defense.
“Lost in the hype of cost-cutting is the cloud’s innate ability to act as a business continuity solution,” said Mary Kay Roberto, Mimecast’s Executive Vice President and General Manager. “Email downtime of any duration can trigger ill effects in today’s business world. Companies located in regions that experience extreme weather can benefit from not having to rely on on-premise solutions that are susceptible to conditions that put data out of the reach of employees.”
By Guest Blogger: Mimecast
