Bass, Berry & Sims modernizes business continuity with Flexential data recovery strategy

The history

Headquarters: Nashville, Tennessee

Bass, Berry & Sims is a national law firm with more than 350 attorneys dedicated to delivering exceptional service to numerous publicly traded companies and Fortune 500 businesses in significant litigation and investigations, complex business transactions, and international regulatory matters.

For over a century, the firm has demonstrated remarkable agility in evolving its services to meet changing client needs, from traditional litigation and investigations to today's complex business transactions and international regulatory matters, all while maintaining the highest standards of legal excellence.

When faced with an upcoming headquarters relocation, the firm recognized an opportunity to transform its disaster recovery infrastructure while ensuring zero disruption to client service during the transition.

The challenge

Relocation renders on-premises disaster recovery impractical

Bass, Berry & Sims’ headquarters relocation presented a strategic opportunity to modernize the firm’s infrastructure strategy with an emphasis on enhancing its disaster recovery capabilities. The new office space, designed for modern workplace efficiency, could not accommodate the substantial footprint required for on-premises disaster recovery infrastructure. This constraint, combined with the increasing costs of maintaining hardware, created a timely catalyst for change.

In addition, housing disaster recovery on premises created risks, including backup systems vulnerable to regional disasters. Combined with mounting hardware costs and space constraints in the new location, maintaining disaster recovery capabilities on premises would compromise both business resilience and operational efficiency while increasing the cost of ownership.

Finding a partner with proven data protection expertise was paramount, allowing the firm to benefit from strategic support for immediate implementation and also positioning the firm for continued resilience.

The solution

Infrastructure insight enables comprehensive, scalable solutions

The Flexential expert-level, holistic approach to combine Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) with strategic disaster recovery planning, design, and strategy provided a comprehensive solution to support the firm's immediate transition needs and ongoing program evolution.

Key features:

After evaluating multiple options, Bass, Berry & Sims partnered with Flexential, the firm’s trusted colocation provider since 2009, to implement a comprehensive DRaaS solution.

“Our decision was driven by Flexential’s thorough understanding of the firm’s infrastructure and their ability to provide a complete package, from strategy and design to implementation,” said Danny Soto, IT Infrastructure Services Manager, Bass, Berry & Sims.

Working closely with Flexential certified disaster recovery experts, Bass, Berry & Sims developed a comprehensive strategy tailored to the firm’s specific requirements and future scalability requirements.

The partnership extended beyond implementation, with the Flexential Professional Services team providing expertise to analyze, design, and plan the disaster recovery program. This long-term perspective ensures the firm’s disaster recovery infrastructure evolves alongside its changing business needs.

The cloud-based DRaaS solution provided immediate benefits: automated failover capabilities, reduced recovery time objectives, and simplified disaster recovery testing.

The seamless integration of the HPE Zerto IT Resiliency Platform within the Flexential DRaaS solution delivers the lowest recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) in the industry. The solution tracks and replicates every system change in real-time, maintaining an always-current backup environment.

Implementation:

The DRaaS solution synced perfectly with the firm’s office relocation timeline, eliminating the need to manage physical hardware during the move.

“The office relocation aligned with our long-term goal to streamline disaster recovery operations,” said Soto. “Flexential DRaaS eliminated the complexity of data center migration while advancing our cloud initiatives.”

The long tenure of Flexential with the firm provided deep knowledge of its infrastructure and business requirements, enabling precise solution design and seamless integration.

The Flexential Professional Services team collaborated with Bass, Berry & Sims to identify and tier systems based on business impact, creating a framework that prioritizes essential operations and reduces potential downtime in the event of a disaster.

Building on these insights, the Flexential Professional Services team delivered a robust disaster recovery plan and detailed runbooks tailored to the specific requirements of Bass, Berry & Sims, providing a strong foundation for ongoing resilience and operational continuity.

Flexential Professional Services also offers hands-on support to perform disaster recovery tests and failover exercises with a focus on building internal expertise to ensure teams are equipped to manage a full range of scenarios.

The implementation followed the Flexential DRaaS deployment blueprint, built on years of experience managing complex migrations for professional services firms.

The team relied on open communication channels and responsive support to stay ahead of potential disruptions. When questions arose during implementation, the Flexential team worked closely with Bass, Berry & Sims to make necessary adjustments while maintaining the project timeline. This collaborative approach ensured the firm’s critical systems remained protected throughout the office relocation.

“The success of our DRaaS implementation has built greater confidence in our cloud journey,” said Soto. “Seeing how smoothly this transition went, and the benefits we realized, has been an invaluable proof point for our strategy. We’re seeing a greater appetite to explore moving additional services to the cloud to streamline maintenance and reduce long-term IT costs.”

The results

Cloud-based disaster recovery delivers resilient, cost-effective operations

Performance: Established a robust disaster recovery environment with improved recovery times and automated failover capabilities, significantly enhancing the firm’s operational resilience.

Efficiency: The migration to Flexential DRaaS solution delivered immediate financial impact, eliminating long-term hardware maintenance costs and reducing ongoing software licensing expenses.

Customer experience: By transitioning disaster recovery operations to the cloud, Bass, Berry & Sims significantly simplified the firm’s IT management process, creating a streamlined experience backed by knowledgeable support teams.