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TECH SUPPORT can take systems down by mistake. Macleod Dixon has yet to use EMS "in anger," as McEvoy puts it — there have been no unplanned Exchange outages. But the firm does use it every year for about 12 hours during a building-wide scheduled power outage. The MessageOne ser- vice has been "relatively flawless" in those situations, he says. When a firm sets up Exchange, it can spec- ify a secondary drop for messages. When messages can't be delivered to the primary server, because it's down for whatever reason, they're automatically sent to the second- ary drop. For Macleod Dixon, that fall-back mail destination is Mes- sageOne's servers. So no incoming messages are ever lost. Still, in the event of an outage, Macleod Dixon has to manually ac- tivate EMS — either over the inter- net or by calling MessageOne — so users can start sending and receiv- ing e-mail with it. (MessageOne also notifies customers if their systems go down.) Macleod Dixon takes the additional precaution of using a ser- vice that sends test e-mails every 15 minutes and alerts McEvoy on his BlackBerry of any otherwise unde- tected outages. When the firm started using EMS three years ago, lawyers had to use MessageOne's browser-based mail software to send and receive mes- sages. It isn't complicated but is dif- ferent from the Microsoft Outlook software they normally use, and they would sometimes forget the web ad- dress for their temporary mailbox. Last year, MessageOne introduced a new feature that allows it to deliver messages to Outlook. Another new feature allows MessageOne to also take over the functions of a Black- Berry server. "We were really happy with the arrival of the Outlook and BlackBerry pieces," McEvoy says. MessageOne didn't filter mail for spam initially either. After one of the scheduled outages, lawyers would find their mailboxes inun- dated with junk. Now MessageOne provides a complete security and filtering solution. Customers with 500 users pay from $1 to $3 per month per user for EMS, depending on the features they buy. BlackBerry and Outlook support are extra. MessageOne can also store 30 days of messages so us- ers have access to past messages as well as the ability to send and receive during an outage. Macleod Dixon doesn't pay for that service, but law- yers can store messages locally on their workstations as a backup. Implementing EMS was relatively simple, a matter of registering each mailbox — it took about an hour. MessageOne automatically detects new users and downloads their ac- count information and contacts lists. The BlackBerry and Outlook services require installation of a software plugin. Macleod Dixon can do this centrally over the net- work, but users have to activate the BlackBerry plugin on their hand- helds. "There is a bit of hounding of people needed to get that piece completed," McEvoy says. When Macleod Dixon investi- gated e-mail continuity, the only alternative was installing a backup server that continually replicates data from the main server. McEvoy rejected this option. It was com- paratively expensive, he says. More importantly, the firm had had one pre-EMS Exchange disaster in which data became corrupted. A replica- tion system would simply replicate the corruption, he says. It would not have saved the firm any pain. Since then, Mountain View, Calif.- based Teneros Inc. has introduced a hybrid alternative — a backup serv- er the company calls an "appliance" that sits between the main Exchange server and users. If the Teneros ap- pliance detects an Exchange outage, it automatically takes over — within less than two seconds. Users never know anything has happened. The trick is that, even though the www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com JANU AR Y 2008 27 exco_LT_Survey_Dec11_06.indd 1 11/29/06 1:41:01 PM