TSP Technology

Yesterday I received an urgent phone call from an auto repair company saying their server was down. They couldn’t retrieve customer information, generate estimates, or bill for their work in the shop. This was obviously a critical situation for them. When I arrived, I found their server to be a refurbished computer relic they had purchased six months earlier. It was an old Dell about the size of a small cabinet which they said was sold to them as really fast and reliable server (they did mention it was a great space heater for the office). Exactly what they needed?

After doing some troubleshooting, I found the server to be running Windows XP. The operating system was obviously in a bad state. As an interim solution, I rebuilt an old PC, installed their auto shop management software, and retrieved their data from their latest backup. Fortunately they had a good disaster recovery plan which included Internet based data backups. I had them up and operational in about three hours–talk about working under pressure. They were grateful and want to discuss a permanent solution for their business.

I’m a strong believer in using newer hardware that has a strong warranty from a major manufacturer like HP or Lenovo. It doesn’t make any sense to put mission critical applications on an old machine thinking you’re saving your customer some money. Today’s hardware is relatively inexpensive and will outperform any system that’s more than five years old. We also discussed the need for regular computer maintenance. Computers are like automobiles, they will continue to run fine until one day they simply stop working, and most of the time it could have been prevented with a little proactive maintenance. I was please the owners had spent the money to implement a very good data backup solution, which prevented the loss of several years worth of company data. This certainly would have been crippling to the company at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars.