The Challenge

Randall & Payne are a fast-growing firm of Gloucestershire accountants. Their professional team provide accountancy, business and tax services to clients ranging from private individuals to family-owned businesses and large limited companies. They have particular expertise in sectors including charities, schools and renewables.

In late 2012 Randall & Payne acquired a Tewksbury based firm of accountants, Morgan Waugh Haines. Just two days into acquiring the new practice, a disagreement with a supplier used by Morgan Waugh Haines meant that the Tewksbury office was without a server. In addition, Morgan Waugh Haines had none of their data. With such damage to the IT system, staff were sent home.

For such an emergency, Randall & Payne turned to GBE Converge. To deal with anything beyond the scope of the company’s IT team, Randall & Payne had been paying a regular ‘insurance’ retainer to GBE Converge and so they were the natural choice to get the IT System and company back on track.

The Solution

Within an hour of the initial emergency call to GBE Converge, there was someone on site at the accountant’s office. The initial step was to retrieve as much data as possible and then determine the specification for a new server that would meet the needs of the newly merged company. Incredibly, just 48 hours after the decision to buy a new server, Morgan Waugh Haines were fully operational again. The speed of the turnaround was much appreciated by the client considering the pressure and difficulty of the situation. In addition, the new server came in at a much lower price than their previous installation.

For GBE Converge, Martyn Smith commented that he was very proud in the way the team responded under the extraordinary situation. “The project showed how GBE Converge can support a client’s business acting as a virtual IT partner and trusted advisor whenever the need or emergency arises. We recognise the importance of systems to the day-to-day running of the business as well as the reputational damage that can be done if these systems aren’t functioning”.

Technical Specification

HP Proliant DL380 G8

• 2 x 2 x intel Xeon E5-2650 2GHz (8 Core)
• 48Gb RAM
• 2 x 500Gb SATA drives in RAID 1 (Mirror) for VMWare Hypervisor
• 6 x 1TB Gb SAS SC Midline in RAID 10 for VM Guest and Data Storage