When a law firm’s primary path to its documents goes dark, even briefly, the cost isn’t measured in IT tickets. It’s measured in billable hours, client trust, and deadlines that don’t move just because the technology did. That’s the problem HYCU is targeting with R-Serve, a new capability built on top of its existing R-Cloud for iManage Cloud backup solution. Where R-Cloud answered the question of whether firms have an independent, recoverable copy of their data, R-Serve tackles a different and increasingly urgent one: can attorneys actually get to their work when the primary system is temporarily unavailable?
To understand what R-Serve does, how it differs from traditional backup and recovery, and why law firm CIOs, boards, and insurers are suddenly asking much more pointed questions about data control and access, VMblog spoke with Sathya Sankaran, Head of Cloud Products at HYCU. In this Q&A, Sankaran walks through the mechanics of read-only continuity access, the real-world economics behind a single outage, and why he believes the shift toward SaaS-run law firms, accelerated by AI adoption, is redefining what business continuity means for the legal industry.
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VMblog: What is R-Serve, and what gap does it fill that R-Cloud for iManage Cloud didn’t already cover?
Sathya Sankaran: R-Cloud for iManage Cloud answered the first critical question: if something happens to my data, do I have an independent copy I control and can recover from? Firms can automatically protect their iManage content outside the primary service, with control over their backup data, retention, and recovery. That independence has been central to the solution from the beginning.
R-Serve addresses the next question we’re increasingly hearing from law firm CIOs: if the primary path to our data gets disrupted, can our lawyers still get to their work?
That’s an important distinction. iManage Cloud is resilient. R-Serve isn’t about replacing that resilience. It’s about giving firms another path to their protected data when the primary path is temporarily unavailable. Authorized attorneys and staff can only access the content they’re already permitted to see through a secure, read-only continuity experience.
The idea really grew out of conversations with law firms and legal IT leaders about control. Their clients, boards, regulators, and insurers are asking increasingly specific questions: Where is your independent copy? Who controls the encryption keys? Where is that copy physically located? And, ultimately, can your lawyers actually reach it when they need it?
So the evolution is fairly natural. R-Cloud gives firms a backup they control. R-Serve gives them an independent path to that protected data when access matters most.
VMblog: What does “read-only” access actually look like for an attorney during a disruption?
Sankaran: Picture an attorney who has a client call in 20 minutes and needs the latest documents from a matter. If the primary service or cloud platform is temporarily unavailable, the traditional experience is pretty binary: either the application is available or the attorney waits.
R-Serve changes that. The attorney can securely access the protected copy of the documents they’re already authorized to see. They can find what they need, download it, and continue working offline with the information while IT and the service provider address the underlying disruption.
The read-only part is deliberate. We’re not trying to stand up a shadow document management environment or introduce conflicting versions during an incident. We’re providing a secure, trackable, controlled path to trusted information.
That’s really the business continuity outcome we’re after. The technology can be experiencing a disruption without every attorney immediately experiencing the same disruption.
VMblog: Why quantify a two-hour outage for a 200-attorney firm as potentially $458,000?
Because “two hours of downtime” sounds like an IT metric. For a law firm, it is a business metric pure and simple.
Based on our research, using an average AmLaw attorney billing rate of $1,145 per hour, if 200 attorneys are unable to work for two hours, that’s $458,000 in potential billable time. It’s an illustrative calculation, not a prediction that every outage costs exactly that amount.
We wanted to quantify it because legal has a particularly direct relationship between access to information and the ability to generate revenue. Attorneys need access to matter documents to advise clients, prepare filings, negotiate transactions, and meet deadlines. When that access disappears, the clock doesn’t stop for the client or the court.
And the financial number is only one dimension. There’s client confidence, contractual obligations, regulatory requirements, and reputation. Increasingly, insurers and boards are asking firms to demonstrate how they maintain access to critical information during disruption.
So the larger point isn’t $458,000. It’s that data resilience is business resilience for a modern law firm.
VMblog: Why was flexibility over where backup data lives so important?
Sankaran: Because an independent copy isn’t truly independent if the customer doesn’t have meaningful control over it.
Law firms have very different requirements. Some standardize on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud. Some have specific infrastructure strategies. Some need particular geographic locations because of client commitments or data residency requirements. Others have very specific security and encryption policies.
What we’re hearing is that the questions are becoming more precise. It’s no longer simply, “Do we have a backup?” Firms want to know: Whose infrastructure holds it? Who controls the encryption keys? What jurisdiction is it in? Who can access it?
That’s why customer control matters so much. The principle behind R-Cloud has always been that firms should maintain an independent copy of critical data.
R-Serve builds on that principle. Your storage. Your encryption keys. Your protected copies. And an independent way for authorized users to reach that information when they need it.
VMblog: How has the HYCU and iManage relationship evolved since 2024?
Sankaran: Our relationship has evolved because the resilience conversation itself has evolved.
It began with a very clear customer requirement: firms moving critical knowledge into iManage Cloud wanted an independent copy of that data under their control. R-Cloud addressed backup and recovery, including automated protection and granular recovery of iManage content.
Now we’re building on that foundation with continuity. The question isn’t only whether the data survives. It’s whether users can reach it quickly during a disruption.
We believe there’s an important philosophical alignment here. iManage has spent decades earning the trust of the legal industry around secure, governed knowledge. As law firms move deeper into AI, that foundation becomes more important, not less. AI makes trusted, available, well governed information even more central to how a firm operates.
That’s why we don’t see this as a choice between iManage and independent resilience. It’s both. A platform firms trust and a backup firms control.
Where the partnership goes from here is ultimately about continuing to listen to firms and reducing the distance between a technology disruption and business as usual.
VMblog: What excites you about where R-Serve could go beyond iManage Cloud?
Sankaran: The bigger opportunity is changing what organizations expect from data protection.
Historically, backup answered the question, “Can I recover my data?” Increasingly, businesses need another answer: “Can my people continue accessing the information they need while recovery is happening?”
That challenge isn’t limited to legal or iManage. Organizations increasingly run on SaaS and cloud services that they don’t operate themselves. IT remains accountable for the business outcome even when it doesn’t control the underlying application infrastructure. That’s one of the fundamental changes R-Cloud was built to address.
R-Serve gives us an opportunity to take the independent data firms already protect and make it more useful during a disruption.
That’s what excites all of us at HYCU. Your backup doesn’t have to be a reactive insurance policy you rehydrate after an incident. It can be staged in advance to keep the business running during one.
VMblog: Why have business continuity and data control become bigger issues in legal tech over the last year or two?
Sankaran: Legal firms have crossed an important threshold. They’re not simply moving applications to the cloud anymore. Increasingly, they’re running the firm on cloud and SaaS services.
At the same time, AI is changing the importance of the data underneath those services. As firms move from experimenting with AI to embedding it in research, knowledge management, client service, and workflows, secure and governed knowledge becomes more important, not less. AI is only as useful as the information it can securely and reliably access.
That creates a new governance question for CIOs. You may trust your SaaS provider and still need an independent resilience strategy. Those aren’t contradictory positions.
And the people asking about that strategy have changed. It’s no longer only the infrastructure team asking about recovery. Clients, regulators, insurers, boards, and security leaders increasingly want to understand where critical data is stored, who controls it, which jurisdiction governs it, and whether the firm can access it independently.
That’s consistent with the broader shift HYCU sees across IT. More critical data now sits outside infrastructure directly controlled by IT, while responsibility for data, availability, compliance, and recovery still sits squarely with the organization.
For law firms, that challenge extends across the applications they depend on every day. That’s why we introduced HYCU Legal360, bringing data protection for critical legal applications together through a more unified approach. The goal is to give firms greater control over their data and a stronger resilience foundation as more of the business moves to SaaS.
For law firms, the question is becoming very simple: If our normal path to our knowledge disappears, do we still have another path to it?
That’s why R-Serve matters. It isn’t iManage or independent resilience. It’s both.
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Sathya Sankaran, Head of Cloud Products, HYCU, Inc.
Sathya Sankaran is a seasoned cloud technology executive currently serving as Head of Cloud Products at HYCU. Previously, as the founder and general manager of CloudCasa by Catalogic, he successfully launched and scaled a pioneering backup-as-a-service platform for Kubernetes workloads, leading it to achieve market leadership status. With over a decade of experience in cloud and data protection, Sankaran has demonstrated a talent for identifying market opportunities and delivering innovative solutions that address critical challenges in cloud infrastructure.
