Archive for November, 2011

Values that Drive J.P. Schwartz, Inc.

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

I often write or edit content for J.P. Schwartz, Inc., it is part of my job.  For me, it is one of the more enjoyable pieces of my job, and believe me, there are many pieces.  Usually the content revolves around technical topics, the latest technologies, or programs our company offers to help businesses meet their IT goals and of course, that is as it should be, seeing as how we are an I.T. Services company.

However today, I am reflecting on this company I work for, where we have come from in just over 5 years and where we are going.

I have been a part of the J.P. Schwartz, Inc. team for four and a half years now; it doesn’t seem quite that long most days.  Before I was interviewed for the Office Manager position I familiarized myself with J.P. Schwartz’s website (by the way, speaking from the HR piece of my job, this is something I highly suggest you do when going for an interview).  One statement stood out for me, a quote on the site, from the owner of the company, John Schwartz, that stated, “If it’s worth doing it’s worth doing right.”  I knew then that I would probably be a great fit for this company and that if the owner had any good sense he would offer me the position.  Well, he does (have good sense) and he did (offer me the job).

From early on, becoming a part of this small company made me feel like I was part of something important.  One big contributor to this attitude was that John had vision but more than that he had reason.   He had a reason for why he started his own I.T. company even though he already had a good paying, stable job.  He had a reason for the things he said and did.  He gave much thought to where he felt the company should go, what kind of service we should be providing, what the big picture would look like.  In all these conversations we would have, I would see integrity, honesty, and true concern to make I.T. in our client’s businesses’ a less painful chore to deal with.

In the time I have been with J.P. Schwartz, Inc. there have been growing pains as we searched to find our niche’.  My roles personally have shifted more times that I can count, and even my title has changed, but one thing has stayed the same, it has always been about reducing the stress and problems of I.T. issues in the businesses we provide service to.

Our most recent service offering is providing a full service, robust, all inclusive Backup and Restore solution.  Being able to bring this offering to our clients was no small task; it involved significant investment, months of training and testing, and of course a lot of time (our most valuable resource).  Honestly, there were days I wished this wasn’t the road we had chosen for J.P. Schwartz, but John was adamant that it was necessary and best for our clients.  He was right.

The Managed Data Protection

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plan, as we now call it, let’s John sleep at night, and provides that same sense of security to our clients.  Loss of Data can put a company out of business quickly, and if a company does survive data loss it isn’t usually without great pain and cost to their company and employees. This fact was what was eating on John’s mind constantly, while we were doing everything well to design and then keep our client’s systems running smoothly; what happens when disaster strikes?  Will the tapes restore, will the data be able to be recovered, will our client be able to keep going?   We had learned all too well that when you are talking about computers and I.T.,  it wasn’t a matter of if the disaster strikes but when; hardware fails, viruses infect even the best protected systems, thefts occur, fires start, and of course employees accidently hit the delete button.

Our Managed Data Protection plan is a really solid representation of what John, and this company have stood for since day one.  Below I have listed a few of the core values that J.P. Schwartz has valued and strived to uphold as I see it since I have been working here.  It is why I have put in four and half years with this company and feel good about where I work.  These values are shown throughout how we treat our clients and how the employees are treated.  Here is how those same values apply to MDP, and why this program is the perfect fit (like I was for the job) for JPS to offer our clients.

Integrity – integrity is defined as ‘the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished’, with MDP we can know that our client’s data, when needing to be resorted will be done so with integrity, it will be whole and include the entire data that was backed up.

Honesty – freedom from deceit or fraud.  Honesty is a quality everyone can appreciate.  When we are able to backup your data using Managed Data Protection we don’t have to hide behind a smoke screen of crossed fingers and good thoughts that the data was properly backed up.  We can sit with you one on one, take an honest look at your needs, and give you the best solution for your business.

Support – to maintain (a person, family, establishment, institution, etc.) by supplying with things necessary to existence; provide for.  Your data is necessary for your companies existence, and with MDP you can be assured that data is being maintained and in the event of loss will be supplied back to you.

Caring – protection; charge: He is under the care of a doctor. Temporary keeping, as for the benefit of or until claimed by the owner.  We extend that care to our clients through protection of their vital data and keeping it safe for them until you, the owner needs to claim it (through a restore).

In today’s world, unfortunately, often times values aren’t as important as the dollar, people aren’t as important as status or success, and choices are often made that compromise others in order to exalt one’s own self or position.  That just isn’t how J.P. Schwartz, Inc. operates or sees how things should be.  We strive to do things right, to do right by people and their businesses, and to offer our clients the opportunity to choose an  I.T. company that offers technicians, office staff, and even programs that uphold higher standards, offer security and peace of mind, and will stand beside them and their own business values.

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Data Restore Success Story

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

This morning we had a request to restore some missing files.  The request was rather vague, we were looking for some budget files of unknown name or location that may have been deleted from an ex employees folder on the server some time before or after their termination in June, 3 months ago.  Using our Managed Data Protection service we were able to simply restore all files that had been deleted from that directory this year to an alternate location so that they could be searched.  The restore selection process took about 5 minutes, we then restored about 12,000 files for a total of 6.5 GB.  The restore speed was limited by the location we restored to, but even so, the total run time was about 1 hour 20 minutes.  We were then able to easily search the data for the files we were looking for.  We did find the missing budget files, and some other potentially useful information.

The reason that this is such a huge success is that this sort of a restore would have been very difficult to accomplish using the previous tape backup solution.  Yes, we could have restored files.  What we would have had to do was restore all files, not just the deleted files, making the search process considerably more difficult.  We would have also been required to mount every backup tape that we had over the last year to pull off files, since we had no idea when the file was actually deleted.  Since we did not know what we were looking for, this would have been a restore project that would have taken 2 or 3 days, as opposed to a restore and location of the data that was finished in under an hour of labor.

I have to say, that our Managed Data Protection service scored a big win today in my book.

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