Ryan and McDonald, CPA’s
Background:
A former branch office of one of the Big Four accounting firms, Ryan & McDonald has established itself as a premier accounting firm on the Central Coast, serving clients throughout the Salinas Valley and the Monterey Peninsula. The firm is led by two partners, Jon Ryan and Robert McDonald, who have over 50 years of tax accounting experience between them, and employs more than 15 tax and accounting specialists.
Challenge:
Their office had three HP servers of approximately four years old. During the middle of a workday, one of those servers suffered a catastrophic hardware failure. This was the primary data server, which held all of their applications and files. Business ground to a halt. ATG tried to troubleshoot the server and found that it could not be repaired and was out of warranty. Using its business continuity solution, ATG virtualized the data server onto its own monitoring server. ATG had Ryan & McDonald back up and running that same day. This solution worked well for several weeks, until the client was ready to find a permanent solution.
Solution:
The clients were so impressed with virtualization they decided to explore the possibilities of a production environment. So, ATG designed a VMware solution and migrated the temporary data server back into production on the new VMware ESX Server. It was completed entirely in one weekend, including building a new small business server, which was also virtualized.
They consolidated two servers onto one new HP server. Not only is the new server hardware more efficient, but reducing the amount of hardware servers decreased the amount of cooling needed for the server room and data closet, which resulted in a savings of $200/month in PG&E bills.
ATG continues to support iTeam Services clients Ryan & McDonald by using all the tools and resources available, including proactive remote monitoring and management, help desk support from the OpsCenter and onsite support when needed. A senior consultant works with the firm’s management team on an ongoing basis, providing advice and recommendations and helping formulate a business plan that incorporates technology as a key differentiator and business advantage for the firm.
