Categories: HPMedia Coverage

Weathering Disaster With a Little Help From Your Friends

What would you do if… a storm devastated your office and most of your clients’ offices, and you hadn’t really slept for three days?

You’d get by with a little help from friends like John Motazedi, the CEO of SNC Squared in Joplin, MO and others in your accountability group.

John and four associates from the Heartland Technology Group stepped up to help Carl Mazzanti, owner of eMazzanti Technologies in Hoboken, NJ after Hurricane Sandy. All had been through similar disasters, and all were MSPs experienced in StorageCraft backup and disaster recovery solutions. Brian Lillo and BJ Lillo of JSO Technology, Shawn Brown of Snap Technology, and Randy Crockett of CCNS Consulting joined John in New Jersey to get Carl’s office up and running.

“All the guys who showed up to help were CEOs, all alpha males who really knew how to get something pushed through, plus they had the technological know how,” John explains. “We all sell the same kind of computer equipment, provide the same kinds of services. We’re in the same accountability group for a reason.”

Because of their expertise in disaster resistance, the accountability group volunteers could address 90% of the problems they found in New Jersey. Within five days, Carl and all of his clients had recovered 100% of their data—with a lot of help from StorageCraft ShadowProtect, too.

“All of his customers were using StorageCraft, the backups and recovery were all StorageCraft, and all of us [in Heartland Technology Group] were familiar with StorageCraft products,” John says. “ShadowProtect was tested and true.”

Though Carl and his clients had backup and disaster recovery plans in place, no one could prepare for everything that happened during and after Hurricane Sandy. “Most people have some plan but it’s never to the level you need it to be. Make sure your backup and disaster recovery plan is very flexible,” John advises.

“Our old plan was ten pages. After the Joplin Tornado, our new plan is fifty pages. The first plan was looking at how to remediate the disaster. Now we look at the process. When something goes wrong, you can’t remember how you used to do something. Document ‘if this process goes away, then this is how you recover it’ in your plan. If you can rebuild your processes, you can get back to work.”

Especially with a little help from your friends.

To learn more, contact us today.

Carl Mazzanti

Carl Mazzanti is Co-Founder and President of eMazzanti Technologies, Microsoft’s four time Partner of the Year and one of the premier IT consulting services for businesses throughout the New York metropolitan area and internationally. Carl and his company manage over 400 active accounts ranging from professional services firms to high-end global retailers. eMazzanti is all about delivering powerful, efficient outsourced IT services, such as computer network management and troubleshooting, managed print, PCI DSS compliance, green computing, mobile workforce technology, information security, cloud computing, and business continuity and disaster recovery. Carl Mazzanti is also a frequent business conference speaker and technology talk show guest and contributor at Microsoft-focused events, including frequent prominent roles at the Microsoft Inspire (Worldwide Partner Conference / WPC). Carl, a serial Entrepreneur, gives back to the community through Entrepreneur teaching engagements at Georgetown University, the company’s ocean wildlife conservation effort, the Blue Project, and Tree Mazzanti.