The day the Exchange server failed was a nightmare

“MozyPro cut my backup costs by more than 80 percent and provided me with a system that is easy to use.”

Alison Eibner lost a year and a half of titles and contracts when her real estate company’s Exchange server crashed. With no backup in place, it took four and a half months and $16,000 to manually recreate all that had been lost. Now Eibner uses MozyPro to safeguard herself from future catastrophes as the real estate industry makes the push to go paperless.

Alison Eibner, vice president of operations and co-founder of Realty Oasis, panicked when she realized that a year and a half of email attachments, including critical titles and contracts, had been erased.

“We didn’t have hard copies of anything,” Eibner said. “We were trying to go paperless, and we hadn’t thought about printing out our email attachments.”

The Denver-based real estate agency had to replace the missing documents and have the proper files available in case of an audit. Two employees spent four and a half months contacting title and real estate companies as well as recreating the data, which cost an estimated $16,000 in lost time and opportunity.

Many brokers and businesses find themselves in similar situations as the real estate industry makes the push to go paperless. As Eibner quickly discovered, a solid data backup plan is essential to protecting electronic files. For $660 a month, she began backing up the company’s computers and servers automatically to a remote location with Connected Backup from Iron Mountain Digital. But while her files were successfully backed up, she found the service difficult to use and understand. “We were never able to restore files without having to call tech support, and when I called, I was usually transferred to several different departments before I got help,” Eibner said. “I spent five or more hours each week wading through our backup issues which took away time from my other responsibilities.”

The 3,000 customers and 160 brokers the business serves were put on hold for weeks while Eibner scrambled to find a solution that would satisfy the needs of all involved. She was looking for something that would allow for centralized account management, but most of all, it needed to be simple and cost-effective. So when Eibner stumbled across MozyPro on the internet, she was shocked at what she had found and signed up immediately.

“MozyPro cut my backup costs by more than 80 percent and provided me with a system that is easy to use and understand,” she said. “I never realized that I could get online backup at a more reasonable price than what I was paying.”

Even as Realty Oasis continues to grow, Eibner spends less than ten minutes each week monitoring user accounts through the MozyPro Administrative Console. The web-based Admin Console allows her to easily manage the company’s account without leaving her desk.

“The Admin Console is one of the most valuable assets to me as the administrator of the account,” she said. “With a chart that shows when I need to allocate more storage space to a user and a spreadsheet to show me if a backup has failed, I have more time to spend as the vice president of operations than the company’s backup director.”

One of Realty Oasis’ biggest benefits of switching to MozyPro was that backup became manageable by multiple people within the company. Employees and associate brokers could now restore their own data, change their backup schedules, and add backup sets themselves without calling Eibner.

“I don’t need to get involved all of the time, and that takes a heavy load off me,” she said. “MozyPro gives them instantaneous access to their accounts online, and our brokers love the independence it gives them in such a busy industry.”

Mozy is simple to self manage and navigate, and when questions arise, Eibner has quick access to MozyPro’s support team 24 hours a day via phone. In Eibner’s fast-paced environment, however, email tends to suit her needs better, and support is there to help.

“It’s nice to get directions that are easy to follow without having to call,” she said. “I’m able to do everything myself with a few helpful instructions along the way. What used to take hours for me to accomplish now only takes minutes.”