Accounting Today - June 2012

practiceprofile
An ounce of prevention

BY SETH FINEBERG

A Florida firm overhauls its IT after narrowly avoiding disaster

AT A GLANCE

Firm:

Goldstein Schechter Koch

Year founded 1948

Headquarters:

Coral Gables, Fla.

Firm executives:

Howard Lucas, partner/CEO;

Sanford Horwitz, partner/manag-ing director, Hollywood office

IT Committee:

Alan Kirzner, tax practice partner; Carlos Garcia, M&A practice partner; Zvi Gold, technology partner;

Amelia Regalado, IT director

No. of staff:

108

No. of offices/locations Revenue (2011): $15.7 million

Just as many people rarely visit the
doctor until they are sick or in pain, Gold-
stein schechter Koch had not made any ma-
jor changes to its it infrastructure — until
one fateful day last tax season, when a system
crash caused some lost data just as GsK was
on a path towards virtualization.
too little, too late, some would say, but the
Florida firm managed to avoid major disas-
ter, and is currently in the midst of plans to
abate future it- or weather-related problems
through off-site hosting of its data and im-
proved internal systems overall.
an aging it infrastructure, coupled with
the real possibility of natural disasters due to
its location in hurricane country, prompted
the firm’s partners and it Committee to begin
a serious review on its current systems. The
committee consists of tax practice partner
alan Kirzner, m&a practice partner Carlos
Garcia, technology partner Zvi Gold and it
director amelia regalado.

A WAKE-UP CALL

prior to the incident in april 2011, the group had decided that changes were needed to its systems, but with the firm and its clients still recovering from a recession, the investments were admittedly not made soon enough.

GSK’s IT Committee (l to r) Gold, Regalado and Kirzner (not pic- tured: Carlos Garcia)

“What ultimately happened was we lost
about 12 to 14 hours during the end of tax
season, as well as some data,” explained
Kirzner. “We were backing up to tape before
discs and the hardware went down. after
that, we had a partners’ meeting and every-
one decided we wanted a system as bullet-
proof as you can make it. everybody bought
in, [the it Committee] spearheaded and led
it. When the recession hit, everyone decided
to be more conservative, and at the time, it
was basically if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it.
When this [incident] happened, times had
gotten better and we were more confident in
spending money, but we realized from this
how vulnerable we really were.”
The it department also realized that while
some upgrades were being made at the time
of the crash, prevention should have occurred
sooner. other issues also likely contributed,
as Gold recalled. “in 2008, we put in [stor-
age area network] and virtual servers, and
the consultant that did it for us recommend-
ed how we set it up and we expected at the
time it would last three years before it would
need more space. That was around when [the
crash] hit,” he said. “We didn’t understand
enough about how they were setting it up.”
ments were made to upgrade the system,
there was limited understanding of what was
really needed for the growth of the firm. “a
year before things went down, we had dis-
cussed a way the system reserves space. We
were looking at not only the space the data
was taking up, but what vmware could do to
replicate and reserve space,” she said. “We
didn’t have the understanding of the space
required to do all this, and when the time
came to invest in more space, the firm decid-
ed to back off because it was fairly expensive
and we were in a recession. Because there
were no issues, we thought we could tackle it
after tax season. Then the tape backup died
and we didn’t have enough snapshots. i was
doing manual backups until the early hours
of the morning weeks before [the crash].”

CALLING IN THE EXPERTS

regalado first met with Gary and Jim Boomer’s Boomer Circle Cio group and talked about the need to take her firm to the next level with regard to technology. she discussed the issues they were having and got advice on implementing the “right” technologies. tech consulting group nmGi then came in to assess the state of the firm’s technology and its plans for the future, ultimately devising recommendations for the next decade or so.

“after a total assessment of the it system and department, we decided to use nmGi to assess where we needed to go. We spent three days with them and they produced a report that was 30 pages of findings and recommendations, broken down to short-term and long-term goals,” said Gold. “all of the short-term items we tried to address before the following tax season.”