MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

I hope you enjoy this edition of GoodCall from Accudata Technologies. I want to spend much of my piece in this GoodCall discussing our new office and the move. 

As everyone knows, complete corporate headquarters relocation is hard enough, but when you add a move of the primary data center – the nerve center of our business – it becomes even more critical.

We actually began our planning well over a year ago. The reason is obvious: You have to plan your needs before you can even begin the new location search. We had certain parameters: 1) We wanted to have good dispersion of our data centers between the headquarters data center and the active/redundant site located about 30 minutes away and we certainly did not want to be closer to that location to ensure full disaster back up.  2) We desired room for expansion after the move without over-sizing our current needs.  3) We wanted the new space to be nice, but not decadent. I think we got it all.

So we began the actual move-in on Friday, March 24. Our new rent would not take effect until April 1, but our builder was kind enough to accommodate our need to start early. We actually wanted to be out of the other office space by April 1 and built in a one-week buffer if need be. But, since the move of a reasonably sophisticated data network requires months of coordination with the carriers we eventually locked in the weekend of March 24. After hours on that day, we moved the principal pieces of the office, including phones and furniture. Everything was up and running that night.

Saturday was the data center move. By then, we had completely built the data center except for the actual servers and associated network equipment. We had put in the new equipment rack, flooring, and all-new cables. Our customers had been alerted to move all of their traffic to the redundant site and they were wonderfully supportive. The checking and rechecking with the data network providers continued. ATT/SBC was here off and on the whole time from early Friday through late Saturday.

Office Ribbon Cutting with the Mayor of Allen        

So the simple part was just to take down every application, server and all the equipment.  Sounds easy, but it was a lot of work by a lot of people. By about 3 p.m. Saturday we were back to 99.9 percent in the new center (one carrier caused a bit of a problem for a small customer set, and they have been terminated).

By Monday morning, March 27 we had completely relocated to the new office at 800 N. Watters Road, Allen, Texas 75013-5342.  Please stop by and visit at your convenience.

New Lobby Entrance

As in the past, GoodCall is our opportunity to inform you about our employees. James White is the focus of this edition’s Employee Spotlight. James is the director of sales. Read more about him here.

Last issue we featured one new customer, Network PTS. This issue we are profiling i3 networks and PriceWheels.com

In the “Problems and Solutions” column, we are discussing the identification of a working telephone number and also the identification of a wireless/cellular number. We will address VoIP in future issues. We trust you will find some of the industry issues of interest.

Respectfully,
M. Gregory Smith
President and CEO