Maurice Blackburn Lawyers DRaaS

Maurice Blackburn Lawyers partnered with SXiQ to deliver a Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution on Microsoft Azure Cloud.

“We put our trust in SXiQ because they were able to demonstrate
their superior knowledge of innovative cloud technology.

Adam Williams– Acting General IT Maurice Blackburn Lawyers

Background

Maurice Blackburn Lawyers is Australia’s leading compensation law firm with the unwavering belief that the law should serve everyone, not just those who can afford it.

Maurice Blackburn has an extensive IT infrastructure, running mission-critical applications to support its organisation nationally. DRaaS plays a key role in protecting the firm’s extensive corporate data and IT infrastructure investments.

Maurice Blackburn came to SXiQ looking for a smarter, more reliable way to protect their business data. They wanted to modernise their Disaster Recovery (DR) technology and to accelerate recovery time, whilst maintaining a flexible commercial model which allowed them to flex or shrink their DR solution as their business needs changed.

The Challenge

• Need for a reliable data protection solution
• Acceleration of recovery time
• Reliable, secure and scalable

With offices across the country, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers has an extensive IT infrastructure running mission-critical applications to support its organisation nationally. Disaster Recovery is fundamental in protecting the firm’s extensive corporate data and IT infrastructure investments.

Facing the challenge of maintaining aging equipment in a second datacentre with high maintenance costs, Maurice Blackburn recognised a need to make the transformation into the Cloud for their disaster recovery environment, removing the need for a second datacentre.

It was imperative to Maurice Blackburn to find a DRaaS solution that provided safe, reliable, secure, scalable and affordable while giving them true flexibility with no lock-in arrangement.

The Solution

• Microsoft Azure Site Recovery technology
• Flexible commercial model
• Subscription-based consumption model with no lock-in period

SXiQ designed a DRaaS solution, built on Microsoft Azure Site Recovery (ASR) technology, which provides continuous asynchronous replication protection for virtual/physical machine workloads into Azure public cloud for both data storage and virtual machines.

The DRaaS solution which SXiQ delivered provided four key outcomes;

• Subscription Service– a consumption-based solution, ensuring costs are aligned to usage when service requirements increase or decrease to adjust to business needs
• No lock-in subscription service
• Leverage of public cloud
• Currency of solution – the use of the latest tried and tested technology

“SXiQ have provided us with a DRaaS solution that can rapidly bring services back online with the added benefits of the cloud.”

Adam Williams | Acting General Manager IT

The Results

• Faster return to service with a solution that performs real-time continuous replication
• High Level of Risk Mitigation
• Solution leverages common and proven DR building blocks.
• No ongoing data centre costs or connectivity
• Hardware-agnostic solution, no capital procurement required
• Reduced financial & brand impact in the event of a major outage
• Lower ongoing costs of management and maintenance
• Fully bundled service

From initial engagement through to design and implementation, the full solution was delivered end to end within 6 months. Maurice Blackburn now has the capability to rapidly bring services back online in a major outage using the solution built on Microsoft ASR technology minimizing any impact to the firm’s brand and customer satisfaction.

Additionally, Maurice Blackburn has benefited from an annual saving per annum as a result of the removed requirement for capital procurement, moving out of an on-prem datacenter and no longer requiring their involvement in the day to day operation, freeing staff up to perform higher-value business activities.