Customer Stories

"When our website went down, our teams were locked out of Spectrum access," Krejci said. In the midst of Harvey, Krejci and crews received a large number of emergency contracts that they needed to perform with haste — the safety of about 20,000 homes fell under Beyer's responsibilities. After Beyer mobilized its people and equipment, the following communication challenges arose: 1. Email — The exchange server, located in the server room at the office was either without power or flooded—at the time, there was no way to tell — causing email to go down. As part of losing the exchange server, employees also lost their company directory contacts. Out of the company's 500+ employees, 150 had company phones, 50 of them were on-call, but only 20 of them could make it to work due to flooded roads and other hazards. 2. Cell Towers — With more than half of Houston's cell towers knocked out, cell phone communications were unpredictable and unreliable. Krejci was the only company executive in Houston at the time; his partners and c-level leaders wanted updates, but he was unable to call or text with information. 3. Data — Beyer's Spectrum server housed a complete list of employees, pay rates, emergency contacts, etc. Krejci recalls caring less about losing job costing and job numbers and codes, but still needed access to these items to complete the emergency contracts at hand. Spectrum also held customer contacts, which made it difficult to reach the public officials to which Krejci needed to report. Access to Beyer's fleet of trucks, bulldozers and loaders, along with equipment start codes and operator names, were also lost when the Spectrum server went down. While there were backups on-prem and on-file with the IT manager, there was no way to get to them with the majority of Houston trapped in their homes. CH A L L ENGE Cont .

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