Case Study:
Business Continuity in an Emergency Situation
Client Profile
An international non-profit organization with approximately 75 staff headquartered in New York City. Staff needed the capability to access the organization’s systems from all over the world. Those systems included Microsoft Navision, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge (CRM for donations), shared files, Sharepoint, and Office 365 email.
Challenges
Hurricane Sandy (2012) forced the client to leave their building for 3 months. They had no internet access at their office and limited physical access, yet needed to enable their employees to work.
Solution
US Desktops replicated client data and applications on servers within our data center, and employees were provided access to their employer’s central system through our data center. Employees previously working in one location, now worked in multiple locations, or from home offices, and were able to centrally access their information.
With the success of this business continuity solution, the client decided to move to US Desktops cloud servers on a permanent basis, and keep a replica of their information in their offices.
Results
Employees now have faster access to computer systems when traveling, while employees in the office continue to access systems with good performance.
Executives feel confident that their systems are not easily affected by natural disasters, since the data center is their primary location and their own office is the disaster recovery site. A copy of their data is sent to their office over the internet nightly—something many cloud providers will not do.