Not everyone is graced with the foresight to know when disaster is waiting to strike. But recently, Acme Refrigeration, a Louisiana wholesale supplier of heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration products, had the wisdom to know that although predicting disaster is nearly impossible, being prepared for its inevitable appearance pays off in a big way.
With their corporate office in Baton Rouge and eighteen branches serving Louisiana and Mississippi, the Acme made the decision this past July to contract with Cloud400 for hosting, backup to the cloud, and disaster recovery plan solutions. Once issues with antiquated image software and internet provider redundancy were resolved, their systems were in place and secure by August 9th.
On August 13th, disaster struck in the form of widespread flooding. Even though their corporate office wasn’t damaged, the rising flood waters were right at their door. However, three of their locations weren’t as fortunate. To compound matters, Beth Orillion, the company’s IT manager, was dealing with flood damage at her personal residence at the same time.
Says Beth, “Being able to pick up the phone and get help from Cloud400 right away was a godsend!”
For One Company, Disaster Was Averted
Described by the American Red Cross as the “largest natural disaster to hit the United States since Superstorm Sandy,” the storm damaged approximately 60,000 homes. Livingston and East Baton Rouge appeared to have suffered the most damage. In Beth’s community of Central (east of Baton Rouge with a population 27,000) over 25,000 were affected by the flood, including 91 percent of the homes and 85 percent of the businesses.
According to Beth, had Acme not been proactive about their backup and disaster recovery, the result could have been “a nightmare” for their business.
“If our servers hadn’t been backed up to the cloud, our branches would have lost connectivity to our corporate office, access to image software, and access to pricing. The cost of downtime would have been substantial,” she adds. “It would have had a huge financial impact on our company.”
Instead, their unaffected locations were able to conduct business as usual. As for the three branches impacted by the flood, Cloud400 quickly jumped in, put a solution in place, and systems recovered within 48 hours.
Fully Recovered
While it’s only a little over a month since the catastrophic floods, the Acme Refrigeration is operating at full capacity.
“I highly recommend Cloud400,” says Beth. “Their knowledge and expertise is top notch, while the technical support has been above and beyond the service level I’ve experienced in my 30 years of IT. Cloud400 spent hours of discovery time to ensure the hosting solution and backup plan were exactly what our company needed. Now, incremental backups are completed hourly and we have a solid disaster recovery plan in place. We know firsthand how valuable that is to the future of our company.”
