Case In Point: Jim McGrath

After losing “a good year-and-a-half worth of work” when his main business PC crashed this past December, Jim McGrath decided it was time to find a solution provider and get serious about backup.

McGrath is president of CEO Communications, a small Houston-based communications consulting firm with some big-name clients, including former President George Bush.

As the former president’s key speech writer, McGrath needs to have access to all of Bush’s past speeches and interviews. “And when you work for a former president, you don’t have time for your e-mail or your computer not to work. He expects a high level of service,” McGrath said.

That’s why McGrath contacted Jack Brandt at Technology Support in Houston. McGrath told Brandt he wanted to do whatever it would take to make sure he never lost another document.

For Brandt’s part, the answer was simple. “I could easily have sold him a full-blown server and had him spend $6,000,” he said. Instead, Brandt recommended a Linksys NAS unit, which put the deal at about $700.

“He wanted a stable way of maintaining all of the work he creates,” Brandt said. “In that case, I had to ask if it was better for him to spend $6,000 on a server or just add more disk space to his network.”

Brandt, a Cisco and Linksys partner, said Linksys’ NAS offerings are a “slam dunk” for small businesses. “You just drop it in and it works,” he said.

Technology Support is now the sole IT provider for CEO Communications, McGrath said. “They came in and made my life a lot easier,” he said.

 Published for the Week Of October 11, 2004