DPS E-News May/June 2006

Raising the Standard

 Issue 7

DPS E-News May / June 2006

DISASTER RECOVERY

Disaster Recovery is the “new old” concern worry on everyone’s mind. Disaster recovery is the new way of saying what happens to your business if disaster strikes? Say you were flooded, the computer servers in your offices stolen, or a fire strikes? The senior partner of a firm came back from holiday to find that his main office server’s hard disks had failed. No problem, a new server was brought in and set up. That took a day or so to organize and then the job of restoring from the tape back up started. This firm was religious about their backup and they had backup tapes for every day and operated weekly and monthly backup tapes.

The daily tapes did not restore, more to the point there was nothing on them to restore, and the other tapes were all corrupted. This is a business employing at that time 60 staff, none of whom now had access to their DPS case software, any client data or any accounts.

What now? Well the client was lucky, very lucky, just a few days before one of the DPS applications developers had taken a full data backup and pulled it to our offices as they were writing reports for the firm.

We were able to restore their data to the position 5 days before the disaster struck.

Why “new old”? The problem has been around for years but there is new focus on it now. Never before have businesses had to rely on their computers and data as much as they do in the current business environment. If the computers do not work then the company does not work. It is a mission critical part of any business

The company involved above? They decided that there was no point in taking that kind of risk any more and have now got a full disaster recovery plan and methodology.

If you want to learn more about disaster recovery and how other firms have made it a part of their business model then please email mdicarlo@dpssoftware.co.uk and she will be able to send you more information on this.

DPS 'How Do I?' Manuals NEW!!

In response to requests from our users, we have developed a series of mini manuals, which are sets of notes that cover specific common aspects of using our systems. Imaginatively named, the ‘How Do Guides’ are step by step notes that we will build into a knowledge base. We hope that you find them useful and if you have comments on them then please let us know. They are all available on our website page:

'How Do I Notes'

If you would like a ‘How Do I’ written on a particular subject, then please let us know and we will certainly consider writing one for you. Alternatively if you have a written a ‘How Do I’ yourself and want to share it with others, please tell us and we’ll add it to our web site. Contact Suggestion for a How Do Note

Law 2006 Exhibition 14/15 June Birmingham

See us at the Law2006 exhibition on the 14^th &15^th June 06, Hall 10, NEC, Birmingham. For more information please visit: Law 2006 Show      

KING PRIOR – With 2 offices and a growing business in the Kent area, King Prior have been DPS users for some time now. Their offices are linked on the same network with any file for either office accessible by the other, under the umbrella of the DPS Case Management system.

The growing of the business meant that their IT infrastructure required more time and money to be able to adapt with the changes of the market. 

“We chose DPS Hosting Solution in preference to others because of its flexibility. The process is simple, DPS ensures that all desktop software employed by our firm are hosted and managed from their secure data centre.  This is of course subject to appropriate firewall and virus protection, and internal password protection to ensure appropriate levels of security and clients confidentiality. 

Since we adopted this solution we have saved money and time.

Scott Ridley the technical director at DPS quoted: “We do offer 100% support as outsourcing is becoming an increasing popular service. Firms realize how much down time really costs and how difficult it is to get suitable IT staff in house to maintain systems, outsourcing solves all those problems”

For the full PDF version of this story please visit our web site or email mdicarlo@dpssoftware.co.uk and she will send it on to you.

JACKIE ROUGH-PROJECT MANAGER

Following 8 years working for a supplier of DPS Software, covering Technical Support, Training, Application Development and Account Management, Jackie joined DPS in September 2003 as an Account Manager.  This role involved actively visiting clients quarterly to discuss application development and improvements, additional training requirements, discussing new features and amending small queries if possible on site there and then.  Recently, due to the sheer number of upgrades to DPS SQL One Office, her role has now changed to Project Manager.  She is now involved in pre-implementation and installation of all upgrades which are then passed back to the relevant account manager's once completed.  Jackie has been using the DPS software for the past 14 years and is probably one of our most knowledgeable members of staff at DPS.

DPS Software e-news May/June 2006

’20 years of creating software for the legal profession’