Disaster Recovery Case Study: Northeastern Power Outage and RPC Worm Crises
MessageOne Successfully Supports More Than 25 Clients and 25,000 Employees During NE Power Outage and Blaster RPC Worm Crises
Award-Winning Email Management Services (EMS) Ensured Email Continuity Was Never Lost For More Than 25,000 Employees
Austin, TX – August 19, 2003 – MessageOne, Inc. announced today that its award-winning EMS (Email Management Services) platform had successfully provided email continuity and emergency messaging services for more than 25,000 employees at 25 corporate enterprise customers in the wake of last week’s Northeast power outage and MS Blaster RPC Worm crises.
In all, 22 customers activated EMS Email Continuity as a direct result of the power outage while another three (3) activated in the wake of damage caused by the MS Blaster RPC Worm. As of 12:00 p.m. EDT today (August 18, 2003), nearly all of the affected customers had been able to restore primary messaging capability at their respective organizations – and all had reported that they had successfully merged EMS message traffic back into their corporate email systems.
Featured EMS Email Continuity Stories
- Infoworld Feature: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/08/15/HNblasterblack_1.html
- PC World: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,112058,00.asp
- Business Journal: http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2003/08/11/daily58.html
Customer Feedback & Response
EMS Customer: David Ryan, Systems Manager, Young Broadcasting, Inc (NASDAQ: YBTVA) – “You guys really earned your money last week. EMS worked like a charm during the blackout. You have a great product that made me look like a hero.”
EMS Customer: Russ Mazzaro, Network Services Manager, Calfee, Halter & Griswold, LLP – “We found the entire EMS activation process simple and efficient and appreciate MessageOne’s readiness and promptness with our concerns and issues. Our mail was imported without issue – thanks again!” said Russ Mazzaro, Network Services Manager for Calfee, Halter & Griswold, the 100-year-old Cleveland-based law firm with more than 3,000 corporate clients.
EMS Customer: David D’Arcy, President, Domino Computing – “EMS has been a lifesaver,” said David D’Arcy, President of Domino Computing(www.dominocomputing.com), a full-service IT support organization headquartered inmid-town Manhattan whose own offices and datacenters were incapacitated by thepower outage.
Domino’s system engineers and administrators support more than fifty (50) private equity, hedge and financial service firms - most of which are headquartered in either Manhattan or New Jersey. “Our first priority was to assist our clients in recovering from this outage. Many of our clients live and die on email to communicate and execute trades. EMS has enabled Domino to keep communicating with our engineers, dispatching technicians, sharing files and collaborating. With cell phone access non-existent, EMS has been our lifeline.”
What is MessageOne’s EMS?
Email has evolved from a novel form of business communication to a mission-critical application as essential as electricity or telephone service. In fact, 80% of corporate email users believe that email is far more valuable than the telephone for business communications.* For many companies, the consequences and cost of email downtime are enormous while the threats to email systems such as connectivity losses, software and hardware failures, virus and DOS attacks, and natural disasters have proven themselves to be real. The pain is even worse during a disaster: If you can’t communicate, you can’t recover.
Mitigating these threats requires a solution that can keep email up and running no matter what. This is why MessageOne developed Email Management Services (EMS). EMS Email Continuity is a highly scalable, standby messaging and employee notification system, built on an open source and secure Linux platform, delivers unprecedented availability and guaranteed continuity of email at one-twentieth the price of traditional solutions. Because it’s based on Linux, it’s significantly more immune from virus and worm threats than most commercially available systems. EMS is a vital and remarkably affordable solution that global customers like Siemens, DuPont and Motorola are using and that no responsible company should ignore. EMS is available directly from MessageOne or from IBM’s Business Continuity and Recovery Services (sold under the name E-Mail Recovery Services.)
Background Facts: Why EMS Email Continuity Worked So Successfully During the Crises
The week of Aug. 11-17th featured the rise of the MS Blaster RPC worm and the NE Power Outage – probably two of the most common reasons/examples (virus and data center loss) customers have purchased EMS.
EMS made possible the ability to work and access corporate email (send/receive) seamlessly from home, an alternate workplace or any site that had web browser access when corporate email and/or facilities became incapacitated as they did duringlast week ’s outages:
- Customer’s backup email systems were activated within 60 seconds of declaration.
- In excess of 25,000 corporate end users used MessageOne’s EMS system during the crises
- MessageOne “redirected” and handled millions of email messages in the first 19 hours of the crises alone
How does EMS Email Continuity work & provide value?
- Backup, emergency email system hosted offsite at partners like IBM & SunGard
- EMS client-side software keeps the backup system current with the customer’s primary messaging system
- EMS software is able to seamlessly “redirect” email so that the outside world can’t tell that the company is running on backup email systems
- Built on Linux and immune to computer viruses and worms like MS Blaster
- How was email continuity via EMS used by affected firms?
- Immediately restored email that enabled recovery workers to coordinate the overall recovery process
- Kept the outside world able to contact these firms (and vice-versa)
- Made it possible for HR/executive communication to immediately flow to their employees on a widespread scale
How much time/money did these well-planned companies take to implement this?
- 1 day installation – complete global enterprise
- Less than a dollar a month per mailbox
- Low-cost technology now exists to ensure that people can always communicate – but ironically, sometimes it takes an event like this to make them even look around and see the revolutionary new technologies available to them
MessageOne EMS Email Continuity Fast Facts: NE Power Outage & Blaster RPC Worm
- 3 Companies Activated EMS in the wake of the MS Blaster RPC Worm
- 22 Companies Activated EMS in the wake of the NE Regional Power Outage
- The first customer activation resulting from the power outage came from Cleveland shortly after4:00 p.m. EDT Thursday, August 14, 2003
- As of 12:00 p.m. EDT August 18, 2003, all but two (2) clients had restored their primary messaging systems. All of those companies had successfully merged all email traffic from the EMS back into their corporate systems
- Affected Clients by Geography:
- 2 in Cleveland
- 7 in Northern New Jersey
- 2 in Chicago – email servers are based in NYC
- 10 in New York City
- 1 in Houston with an affected office in NYC
- Number of Total Affected Enterprise Seats:
- Greater than >25,000 total seats
- Business Segments of Affected Firms:
- 6 law firms including 3 American Laywer Top100 Firms
- 1 Pharmaceutical Manufacturer (NASDAQ-traded)
- 1 National Pharmaceutical Sales & Marketing Company (Largest U.S. clients include Pfizer, Rocher, Bayer, Abbott, J&J et. Al.)
- 5 IT Services and Support Organizations
- 1 NASDAQ-traded major media conglomerate
- 1 Very large commercial property management firm
- 4 private equity/venture capital/hedge funds
- 2 NYC-middle market dealer brokers
- 1 Commercial Leasing Company
Take the Next Step
MessageOne’s EMS Email Continuity represents the most affordable and effective solution, guaranteeing continuous access to the company’s email in the event of a primary messaging system disruption. EMS provides organizations with a highly affordable solution to ensure continuity of email messaging in the event of an emergency or system failure. It’s designed to allow organizations to avert costly downtime, productivity and revenue losses while providing an easily managed, automated solution that serves as alife-line in times of system stress and any emergency.
