With three people managing 200 rental properties, Houston’s Houses for Rent is a small business that can’t afford computer system failures.
That’s why owner Mrs. La’Doyce Jenkins relies on eZigma to handle her periodic “slowdowns and hiccups';” but she never gave serious thought to a total system failure. Why? Well that's because most small business owners think "It could never happen to then" which is the order of the day for most small business owners like Mrs. Jenkins. Besides a safeguard would be to expensive and unaffordable for a small business.
“The idea of fixing something that wasn’t broken didn’t make sense to me,” Ms. Jenkins said about her small network of three aging Pentium III PCs. “We’ve been relying on eZigma to fix our periodic computer problems for nearly five years, and that was just fine. It wasn’t until our most recent situation – it was a near calamity – that I finally realized the critical role managed computer services could have for my little network.”
That “near calamity” startled Mrs. Jenkins shortly after 9 a.m. one Tuesday in April. She was preparing tax data for her accountant. It came as dreaded “blue screen.”
“I think my heart stopped. My eyes raced around the screen, then around the room. I pulled on the cord. It was still plugged in. ‘Ohmygod! What what’s happening here? Where are my taxes? Ohmygod!’ I was panicked”
Not only were her business tax records on that PC, but so was most other business data: customer account information, expense receipts, accounts receivable, billing. Everything, it seemed, because her machine functioned as the server for the other two client PCs.
Calling eZigma was Mrs. Jenkins natural next move – even this was clearly more than a routine break/fix problem.
“As soon as I heard her say she had blue screen, I knew we had the potential for a real disaster in the making,” said eZigma CEO Neil Patel.
Since Mrs. Jenkins’ was a long time customer and her panic was obvious, Patel decided to service the account himself.
Less than half-an-hour after receiving the original call for help, Patel arrived at Houses for Rent, Mrs. Jenkins was still teetering near panic.
The diagnosis didn’t take long, and it wasn’t good: a fried master boot disk, and no backups.
Over the years, Mrs. Jenkins’ busy schedule kept her from following recommendations to update her software and renew her user agreements. Her business applications now were out of date and antivirus coverage expired. The little network at Houses for Rent was wide open for grazing by hackers around the world.
“A questionable computer tech -- with sales commissions in his mind -- simply could have said, “Sorry. It’s dead. Gone. You’re going to have to replace the drive; but you might as well replace the whole system.” And that would have cost Mrs. Jenkins upwards to $10,000.
Instead, Patel deployed proprietary software that he believed would resuscitate the drive and allow him to recover most, if not all, of that data.
By the end of the day, the CEO of eZigma himself had recovered virtually all of Mrs. Jenkins’ data, repaired the hard drive, reinstalled damaged software, updated crucial business and security applications, and tuned the network.
In a single moment, Mrs. Jenkins’ world of vital business records could have been lost, and her business threatened. Instead, eZigma gave Houses for Rent a second lease on life, charged a small fraction of what she could have spent, and gained a convert to Managed Systems Services, eZigma’s signature product.
eZigma is a nationwide provider of insightful and affordable IT services. eZigma has been providing onsite IT services since 1996, works nationwide, has an extensive team of experienced consultants, and is committed to consultant availability in hours not days unlike its competitors. Anyone can repair a computer or install a printer. eZigma plans designs deploys secures and manages to improve your bottom line.