The Business Challenge

One visit to the firm’s website, and it’s immediately apparent what drives Chambliss. The 130-year-old Chattanooga, Tennessee-based law practice is fiercely loyal to clients. It’s that same dogged loyalty to clients that powered the insight and commitment to improve backup availability of data. According to Attorney at Law magazine, just one hour of downtime each month in the hotly competitive legal marketplace can cost the average law firm $60,000 in lost billable opportunities over the course of one year (based on 25 lawyers billing at $200 per hour). Chambliss employs 60 attorneys. The faster attorneys have access to data, the faster they can serve clients.

“Legacy backup wasn’t working properly,” said Tony Young, Firm Administrator. “We felt the cloud service we were using was ineffective and not doing the job. Another local cloud service provided timely backup but was expensive. Our business needed a better way to back up and restore data.”

The core asset of every law firm is data. If data is corrupt and can’t be recovered quickly, law firms risk their reputation, billing opportunities, and regulatory compliance. The longer it takes to restore data, the longer it takes to serve clients and complete case work.

“Backing up our data was challenging,” added Geoff Jones, System Administrator. “The nightly incremental process took far too long. Month-end backups were running for days. We backed up to tape as well as local storage, and at times we experienced failures. We weren’t able to check the tapes to confirm if we were getting good quality. We tried other ways to address data availability off-site, but nothing really worked. All this was simply unacceptable from a business standpoint.”

Tape backups meant someone has to transport them off-site and bring the ones back from the previous week, burning time and short-changing other projects, thereby potentially affecting attorney productivity and, ultimately, clients.

“Our firm has a fierce commitment to quality service and exceeding client expectations. Therefore, our attorneys expect client information to always be available,” Young said.

“We were committed to implementing whatever technology we determined was necessary to make sure that we were providing our clients with the very best service,” Young added. “When we made the switch to Veeam and iland, we had no hesitation that we had the very best scenario. It has made our IT department better than before.”

The Veeam Solution

The switch by Chambliss to Veeam® Backup & Replication™ provided the reliability, cost savings, and time efficiency consistent with the firm’s commitment to providing clients with reliable, cost-effective service.

“With Veeam and iland, we created a solution that met our objectives to ensure exceptional customer service and to better manage IT costs,” Young said.

“We cut backup time from 23 hours to six,” Jones added. “Lost emails could be restored in minutes when it used to take hours. Now, with Veeam, we have a full 30 days of backup, and it only takes minutes to restore files. Confirming accuracy is simple since overnight backups are quickly checked each morning. It all benefits clients by allowing us to consistently provide outstanding service.”

“The cost savings with Veeam along with better use of people, time, and equipment upgrades allowed us to reduce overall IT costs by almost 40 percent,” said Young. He added that Veeam itself allowed a 30 percent reduction in backup and disaster recovery cost while providing higher performance and better service.

“Overall, once we virtualized a majority of the servers and switched to Veeam, it just made everything a lot easier,” Jones said. “Then, we searched for an offsite backup solution and chose iland. Using Veeam Cloud Connect we replicate servers to iland and do cloud copies nightly. Everything just worked great together. We created an overall solution that met our objectives to better manage costs and improve the reliability of service to clients.”

Young added that the savings from cost reductions were put to good use through equipment upgrades. Savings also helped fund implementation of a security assessment to further enhance the business’s secure environment.

“We view investment in security as a mandatory obligation to our clients,” Young said. “As a long-standing firm, we will implement whatever technology we find necessary to make sure that we are providing our clients with the very best service. We won’t skimp or cut corners.”

The Results

• Ensures 24.7.365 Availability
  By ensuring 24.7.365 Availability, Veeam and iland enable Chambliss to serve clients faster.
• Slashes backup time from 23 hours to six
  By reducing the time it takes to ensure data availability, Veeam helps Chambliss allocate time to accomplish other mission-critical, business-focused projects such as further enhancing security and upgrading equipment.
• Reduces IT backup and recovery costs by more than 30 percent
  Veeam helps slash IT operational costs by almost 40 percent while enabling high-level backup and DR capabilities at a better price point for the firm.