MicroServe serves up data disaster protection and business continuity

By: Steve Wednesday September 11, 2013 Tags: Denver, Jeff Golden, MicroServe, Rick Albert

By Steve Porter

InnovatioNews

DENVER -- Disasters can come in many forms, from a fire to vandalism to a sprinkler system that malfunctions and a once-dry office turns into a soggy mess.

The list of possible business-related disasters that can put a company's data at risk is long, but a Maryland-based company is offering pre-disaster planning assistance and a regional response from its Denver office that opened earlier this year.

MicroServe Consulting Inc. specializes in disaster recovery and business continuity, according to Rick Albert, the company's executive VP and senior systems analyst.

And that's especially important to startups that are bootstrapping their operations and have no IT specialist on board to attend to those possibilities.


"One of the big things, especially for a startup, is you definitely don't have the IT resources a larger established company would have," Albert said. "But you certainly have the same needs."

Founded in Gaithersburg, MD in 1991, the company incorporated in 1996. In January of 2013, MicroServe opened a second location in the Dominion Towers at 600 17th St. in Denver.

Albert said MicroServe can bring in whatever expertise is needed to help a business survive a disaster and carry on without losing its momentum.

"What we do is bring a team approach to it," he said. "We bring expertise from very senior level engineers who have set up international networks to tier 1 help desk technicians and everything in between."

"We can bring in whatever level of expertise that's needed to come up with solutions to help mitigate those risks."

For starters, MicroServe provides a private cloud environment in its owned-and-operated data center in Maryland to back up data that could be lost. Albert said the Denver office is a "hot site" to back up that Maryland site, and vice versa.

"As part of our build-out we'll be bringing up our own disaster recovery site in Denver," he said. "If the Maryland Data Center dropped off line, operations would automatically switch to Denver."

Albert said it's all about data security. "To me, data security is it's backed up properly. When something happens and it fails, you've got to be ready for it. With a startup, you might not have your files properly backed up and taken off the site."

Albert said 50 percent of businesses that lose their data go out of business within a year.

MicroServe is among the few disaster planning and recovery firms that offers complete infrastructure oversight to make sure a company's system is airtight.


Wholistic approach

"One thing that MicroServe Consulting does that really sets us apart is we walk through and survey everything from top to bottom," said Jeff Golden, MicroServe's sales and operations manager. "We take a 'wholistic' approach to our client's networks, looking at the physical layer all the way up to the application layer.

"That's why it's great for us to be on your team from the beginning - to help plan and design your network infrastructure as you go not only for affordability but also for scalability.

"We believe in a very proactive approach to IT support and are strong believers in putting out the smoke before it becomes a fire," Golden said. "System monitoring agents on all network devices notify us 24-7 when your devices are having a problem so our engineers can troubleshoot the issue before it becomes a larger problem. We are firm believers in our clients paying for uptime -- not downtime."

Albert said MicroServe's services go beyond simply helping companies prepare for and avoid disasters to ongoing business consulting.

"Business continuity goes way beyond the IT department," he said. "Do I have a supply chain if my warehouse goes down? Is my delivery chain protected?"

Albert said the cost of assuring disaster recovery and business continuity varies with each particular business and its unique needs.

"We are very much a customized solution," he said. "We are very conscious of spending our clients' money effectively. We try to spend it as if it's our own money."

For more information, visit http://www.msconsulting.com.

About the Author: Steve