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Atkin/Jones' marathon effort minimizes cost of surprise server failure
Fortunately for the accounting firm of Bay Sherman
Craig, Goldstein, LLP, Atkin/Jones' Howard Mizel was wearing
his running shoes when he arrived to handle a routine network operating
system (NOS) upgrade. A surprise hardware failure kept Howard running through
a non-stop overnight stretch to minimize user downtime.
In the process of planning for the expansion of the firm's
Novell NetWare server, Mizel determined that the organization could upgrade to the latest
NOS release and add needed users for the same cost as just adding users
under the old release. The customer agreed, and the upgrade started on
schedule. However, almost nothing else went according to plan.
"We weren't looking for excitement, but we found it," recalls
Bay Sherman's Scott Stevenson.
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A staff accountant, Scott Stevenson is also the in-house technical liaison and system administrator. Previously employed by a firm that merged with Bay, Sherman in the Fall of 1996, He came to appreciate Mizel's expertise working with the network specialist through the merger of the two companies' accounting systems. "We went through six computer support people, but I knew more than any of them," says Stevenson. "So I recognized Howard's expertise immediately." Stevenson recalls the savings of time and money Bay Sherman reaped when Mizel facilitated merging historical files for 500 tax returns into the company's database.
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Mizel started upgrading the server operating system
Sunday morning, while
Stevenson updated the client systems. About midnight, the restore of 3.5GB
of files screeched to a halt with more than a million disk errors. Mizel
switched to a backup disk and resumed the process, but it was soon evident
that something else was amiss.
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Mizel consulted with technical support at Hewlett-Packard,
the builder
of the server and disk drives. None of the available diagnostic routines
was able to identify the problem. At that point, the Atkin/Jones technician
minimized downtime by reloading Bay Sherman's data and programs on a substitute
server from his shop.
Meanwhile, Atkin/Jones interceded on behalf of Bay
Sherman to clear
up confusion with the hardware manufacturer over the system's warranty
expiration date. Soon, new disk drives were delivered under warranty and
Mizel prepared them for the upgrade. The following weekend, he and Stevenson
brought the upgraded system online with the new NOS and all data.
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Strategic planning, crisis management, operational
consulting,
litigation support services, succession planning, and business valuation
are some of the ways Bay Sherman Craig, Goldstein, LLP goes beyond the traditional accounting practice.
Its clientele includes entertainers, publishing organizations, real estate
syndicators, and charitable organizations.
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Howard Mizel has been supporting Bay Sherman Craig Goldstein since
mid-1995. His response to the recent disk emergency is standard operating
procedure for Atkin/Jones. For Scott Stevenson, Atkin/Jones proved that
being the "network headache specialist" is not just an advertising slogan.
It's the kind of commitment to minimizing the cost of computer downtime
that stacks the odds in favor of the service company's clients.
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