Corevist Survives Hurricane Florence

Featured image: Emerald Isle, NC, 9/17/18, courtesy of Noah Scribner, Magento Practice Manager

The North Carolina coast is still reeling from Hurricane Florence. There are still major road closures all over the state and plenty of flooding that hasn’t subsided. Our thoughts and prayers go out to families whose lives have been turned upside down by this storm.

Since Corevist is based in Raleigh, NC, Hurricane Florence had potential to disrupt not only our operations, but the operations of our clients, who depend on Corevist Commerce to process billions in revenue each year.

Here’s what (didn’t happen) to Corevist while the storm was at its worst.

Thanks to TierPoint, Florence was a non-event to our global clients

Thanks to TierPoint, our world-class datacenter provider, Corevist’s globally-accessed ecommerce software experienced no service interruption. Justin Diana, Corevist VP of Operations, put it this way: “TierPoint really had all the bases covered to keep Corevist Commerce up and running. Our application is critical to the operations of B2B manufacturers all around the globe, and TierPoint has proven once again that they’re the right vendor for the job. All around the world, Corevist users experienced no service interruption.”

The Corevist executive team was confident in TierPoint’s preparedness. And as we learned on Friday morning, that confidence was well-founded. The storm had already hit when our CEO, Sam Bayer, got this email from TierPoint around 10am:

TierPoint is sending this message to inform you of an event relevant to services provided to your organization.

At Approximately 9:35 ET, the Raleigh data center experienced a momentary loss of utility power. The local operations team has confirmed that the facility has successfully transferred to generator power and that all systems are functioning normally.  Utility has been restored at this time; however, facility will remain on generator for 30 minutes to ensure clean power has been restored. Local Operations will continue to monitor all systems. At this time, no customer impact is expected. The next update will be sent after facility has returned to normal power source.

Please contact our Enterprise Operations Center if you have any questions or concerns regarding this event.

In the course of the storm, TierPoint never lost utility power again. Even the brief loss of utility power created zero impact on Corevist’s global user base. The generators came on as planned, everything ran smoothly, and our clients’ B2B customers all over the globe kept placing orders through Corevist Commerce.

Florence was quite the adventure for the Corevist team

Several of our team members are based in the Raleigh area. They posted real-time updates in Slack as the storm rolled in and even managed to snap a few photos.

Noah Scribner, Magento Practice Manager – Flooding on Emerald Isle

 

Joseph Goad, Sales Manager, US – Damage in SW Raleigh

Joseph says: “Half of a tree has already fallen at my rental property near SW Raleigh. Luckily, did not hit anything.” 

I-40 East Flooding, towards Wilmington

What Hurricane Florence has taught us

While an event like this is terrifying, it also served to focus our minds on our risk management strategy. What would happen if our primary datacenter experienced a catastrophic event?

In the past, when clients have asked us about this worst-case scenario, we’ve offered to create geographically diverse disaster recovery solutions. While we haven’t yet been asked to implement this kind of solution, we may revisit the idea and see how we can package it for clients who need that extra level of reassurance.

The takeaway for our clients

At the end of the day, the storm did its worst, but Corevist kept running. For each and every client, Corevist kept showing real-time pricing from SAP, kept posting orders to SAP, and went on offering the phenomenal user experience that our clients’ customers depend on.

That gives us immense pride. It means our product is well-architected, and our partnership with TierPoint is rock solid. Again, a huge THANK YOU to TierPoint and everything they had in place to make this storm a non-event.

Moving forward: FREE case study

Wondering what SAP-integrated ecommerce looks like in the real world? Download this FREE case study on Mannington Mills. You’ll learn how this leading flooring manufacturer grew web sales 150% when they added rich content to their SAP-integrated ordering portal.

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