Orthosynetics

Taking a Proactive Approach to Business Continuity

Metairie, Louisiana-based OrthoSynetics™ is the largest provider of business services and consulting to orthodontic and dental practices worldwide, and currently serves about 350 locations. It manages the business and marketing functions of these practices, including advertising, payroll processing, financial reporting, purchasing and patient financial services.

As part of its back-end business services to dentists and orthodontists, the company also offers electronic claims filing; website development and hosting; a proprietary practice management system, Walrus; and hosting of all of its clients’ systems and data.

With all of its clients depending on the company to protect their data and ability to conduct business, OrthoSynetics moved its production equipment to Colo4 in August 2007 to ensure the accessibility and security of the data.

"With headquarters in the New Orleans area, our company knows full well the dangers and challenges that hurricanes and tropical storms pose to our company, our employees and our customers," explains Chris Roussos, president and CEO of OrthoSynetics. "Our new data center will ensure that our company's and customers' data is safe in case of an emergency, that our customers' operations are not disrupted if a storm or other natural disaster strikes, and that our team has an alternate base of operations in case of such an emergency."

Colo4: a competitive differentiator

Not only did the company make this move a linchpin of its disaster recovery and business continuity efforts, OrthoSynetics issued a press release announcing the step and aggressively promotes its secure, redundant, state-of-the-art data center as part of the value it delivers.

"If the corporate headquarters goes down for any period of time, our new data center ensures our IT functions are back up and running within a millionth of a second," adds Tim Tiffin, chief information officer of OrthoSynetics.

“Going to Colo4 ensures our doctors and their practices have access to their systems and our technology across the globe. The precautions we’re taking as a company mean we don’t have anybody wondering, ‘What happens if another Katrina comes along?’”

A clear-cut decision

Tiffin and his team had looked at five different facilities in the Dallas area before making their decision. Among the deciding factors was the facility’s thought-out design and location. He also was wowed by the Colo4 staff. “They are very knowledgeable; they seem to have a flair for getting things done,” Tiffin says. “When we were still in the discovery phase we actually spent a couple of weeks calling different providers on multiple occasions to see what their response times were; what their answers were to pertinent problems and issues. And Colo4 beat pretty much everyone else out.”