05.13.2015
Acuity Management Solutions, a leading provider of cloud-based legal e-billing, matter management and analytics technology, has selected Iron Mountain Incorporated® (NYSE:IRM) and NEC Corporation of America (NEC) to protect its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and client data using a unique escrow and hosting solution. This solution answers a critical need for ensuring business continuity and information protection.
Storage and information management company Iron Mountain, together with NEC, engineered an agreement framework that allows both companies to leverage their core competencies to create a complete SaaS protection solution for Acuity’s subscribers.
The adapted technology business continuity service works with NEC’s NBlock Infrastructure-as-a-Service to safeguard SaaS applications, as well as the intellectual property that runs those applications, and the associated customer data. This solution protects the subscribers of Acuity’s SaaS applications in the event of problems with the SaaS provider, significant outages, or other service issues. This enables Acuity to build trust with its prospects and customers because the solution addresses the risk objection head on, by giving the subscriber a means to execute its contingency plan independently.
President and CEO of Acuity, Kelley Johnston, was a key architect in developing this solution, which will be available to Acuity clients and marketed as Acuity ProtectSM. “Acuity Protect allows our clients to benefit from the best of both worlds – and marries the affordability and scalability of our cloud-based solution with the risk mitigation and security of traditional behind-the-firewall solutions. Our clients and prospects deserve a comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery solution to ensure their data and intellectual property are protected for the long haul, and Acuity Protect delivers,” observed Johnston.
Iron Mountain is providing a business continuity arrangement that secures the relationship among Acuity and its client, along with its supplier, NEC, which hosts Acuity’s disaster recovery (DR) environment. NEC has agreed to create a sub-environment available to Acuity’s clients. Triggered by a defined set of parameters, NEC will make the sub-environment available to Acuity’s client for a period of 90 days, over which time, NEC and Acuity’s client will negotiate a longer 18- to-24-month agreement for purposes of securing application continuity.
As part of the business continuity agreement, Iron Mountain will manage the escrow account for NEC and Acuity’s customers containing all of the know-how and proprietary information to make this plan work. Iron Mountain and NEC will provide annual testing to ensure that the failover, support and data recovery procedures work on behalf of Acuity. All of NEC’s equipment is housed in Iron Mountain’s National Data Center, a secure data center in the company’s underground facility in Boyers, Pennsylvania.
Acuity’s vision is to make affordable, intuitive enterprise legal management software available to legal teams of all sizes. Acuity’s Johnston concludes, “Acuity Protect tackles the vestigial objections to the Software-as-a-Service model and mitigates continuity and security risks in a comprehensive, elegant package. Acuity Protect offers the business continuity and redundancy previously only available with traditional behind-the-firewall solutions. Delivering our service in the cloud means we can offer a lower price point to our clients, enabling them to reduce legal spend quickly and recognize ROI in year one.”
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