Round-the-Clock Crisis Response for the Energy Sector

Picture this: it's a Friday afternoon, and you're ready for one thing and one thing only—going home. You can picture it, maybe it's a night in with pizza or leftovers (or your struggle meal of choice) or going out for a movie night with dinner and drinks. Either way, when your system suddenly goes down, you can feel the Friday night you planned slowly (or rather, very quickly) going out the window.

For one of our Energy customers, this is exactly what happened. Not only did a Friday night slip from their grasp, but their server, the very thing which all their data systems run on, went down. This impacted everything, from production to procurement. They couldn't access anything.

The Problem: server goes down

For those of you who know, when a server goes down, so does your business. And for those in the energy industry, you know production skirts to a halt and panic starts to settle in. For this particular customer, this happened at the most inconvenient of times, a Friday and, the cherry on top, it was a server that had been upgraded just days before.  

The issue was two-fold. One, the server was unable to relay email even after an upgrade. This was because of a change in the way that Internet Information Services (IIS) worked between the older version and the upgraded version. In layman's terms: after the upgrade, the systems weren't talking to one another. 

Second, only after discovering this did we realize in the initial issue fix our team conducted, it broke their ability to access about half the files on the server. 

The Solution

• After the initial fix, our support and projects teams dedicated several hours to research and troubleshooting the problem.
• Like we do with all customers, we also got them situated with their personalized service delivery team (we call them PODs) who they will interact with exclusively every time the company has a problem. This dedicated team is all spearheaded by the energy company's personal vCIO to keep Centre on track to help them accomplish their business goals. 
• Through constant communication from Friday afternoon and well after 10PM, our technicians identified the problem and fixed it.
• Along the way, the Centre team made sure the customer was aware of what they were working on, the needed downtime was approved, and each person from every necessary team knew their part to play and at what time. Even if someone was not performing a specific task, they were still present to monitor its completion and keep everyone informed. 
• By giving up their Friday evening, they embodied the true spirit of Centre's #ONETEAM mindset and ensured we delivered an outstanding customer experience. 

"Taking ownership, bringing the right people in, and advocating for the solution I believed in ultimately led to the resolution of [the customer's] file server issue. Communication from all teams involved was paramount to our success. Open communication across [all] teams allowed us to discuss our research, ideas, and talk through each potential outcome [which] made all the difference in not only uncovering the best resolution but breaking that fix down into actionable tasks for each team."

Chloe Buckley

Consultant at Centre Technologies

Learn More

Our goal is to always make sure you're protected and fully equipped to get your job done. That doesn't stop on Friday afternoons. 24x7, we're here to help.

We're willing to do whatever it takes—whether that's offboarding you from a less-than-stellar existing IT team or just to help you fill in the gaps. We're committed to making sure our customers stay online and protected from future problems. 

Want to learn more about how we've helped companies specifically in the Manufacturing industry? Check out our blog and our Energy page for more information.

Or do you want to go straight to the source? Feel free to contact us directly. Talk soon!