Brief description of CSM’s SQL Server environment:
We have a Fail Over Cluster.

Why did CSM choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
Randy and his team were recommended to me by Brent Ozar. After speaking with Randy, it was clear that they could help us.  

Describe the scope of the work SQL Solutions Group undertook for CSM.
It started with a full stack health check and remediation of incorrect configurations. SSG then moved on to tackling improvements:

• Query tuning 
• Machine allocation recommendations 
• Designing SQL VM specs for a cloud migration
• Executing the cloud migration 
• Migrate/Upgrade from SQL 2012 to SQL 2022 
• Improve data loss times with a better backup system

What are the outcomes of this work?
Greater stability and speed of the application.

How did the project help CSM be more competitive and/or productive?
We were able to spend less time worrying and managing our SQL systems and more time focusing on our product. That’s a significant improvement.  

What kind of ROI did you realize from the work done by SQL Solutions Group?
As reported by our support staff, we just had our most stable busy season ever, which is absolutely the goal.

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SQL Solutions Group?
Randy and the crew are great to work with and I would highly recommend them. We have nothing but great things and good experiences to share. 

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Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CEO of a cloud-based practice management software.

What challenge were you trying to address with SQL Solutions Group?
We needed help improving the speed of our software.

What was the scope of the project?
SQL Solutions Group is helping us optimize our software’s speed. First, they conducted a health check for our SQL server. After that, they had a full presentation detailing areas for improvement. They’ve then made a plan where easier fixes are prioritized over more complicated ones. SQL Solutions Group has installed a tool on our server that tells us a query’s speed. Their team advises us on what improvements we can make to increase our system’s performance.

How did you come to work with SSG?
We found them through a Google search for SQL server consulting providers.

What is the status of this engagement?
We’ve started working together in January 2021, and it’s ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We’ve gotten more than our money’s worth with SQL Solutions Group.

How did SSG perform from a project management standpoint?
SQL Solutions Group is always available whenever we need them. We communicate through Zoom calls.

What did you find most impressive about this engagement?
SQL Solutions Group’s high level of expertise with SQL is impressive. SQL is a complicated product to work with, and their more than 25 years of experience in SQL is what we need for our business.

Are there any areas where SSG could improve?
I can’t think of anything. We’ve been pleased with their services.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?
The larger your application and database, the more necessary SQL Solutions Group’s services are. Work with them if you want to scale your business and grow your software company.

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The case study below was submitted by Keith Putt, Director of IT at Verathon

Brief description of Verathon and SQL Server usage environment:
Verathon is a global leader in medical devices, primarily bladder volume measurement and airway management, in over 60 countries and regions. Our database environment currently includes both on-premise and Azure based databases that support enterprise apps, ERP, and websites.

Our requirements for SQL Server include high availability, off-site disaster recovery, and high-performance reporting.

Why did Verathon choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
We needed an on-shore team with the right expertise in this space — a breadth of skillsets to support SQL and underlying reporting concepts to help us leverage datasets. We also needed a flexible model that provided on-going oversight and health checks of systems that allowed us to scale up on a monthly basis, depending on business need. SQL Solutions Group matched all these needs.

Describe the scope of the work SQL Solutions Group undertook for Verathon.
We sought out SSG because of an integration project, between SalesForce and our Epicor ERP system. The SSG team had good experience with Task Factory, which is what we selected for our integration. It allows us to maintain our APIs using a SQL resource rather than a one-off developer.

We started off with an inventory and Health Check of our environments, looking for configuration and performance issues. We also needed assistance migrating our disaster recovery strategy from co-location to the cloud. SSG also installed SentryOne for ongoing monitoring of performance and health of our production systems.

What were the outcomes of this work?
Since SQL Solutions Group started, we can more proactively respond to bottlenecks or other changes and challenges that impact requirements, performance and scale. SentryOne provides excellent visibility into long-running queries or other areas where we can improve enterprise applications. With SSG, we have a consistent resource that has knowledge and understanding of our environment, so if issues arise, they can quickly address them—they already know our systems.

How did the project help Verathon be more competitive and/or productive?
We have reassurance of the underlying health and performance of our enterprise systems and databases. With SSG handling what they do best, our full-time staff can focus on their areas of expertise, rather than forcing them to dabble as a SQL developer or administrator. Working with SSG gives us that expertise without having a “DBA” on staff. Another benefit is that they’ve helped us more effectively manage SQL Server licensing needs and hardware requirements in the enterprise. We’ve been able to consolidate so we don’t have “SQL sprawl.”

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SQL Solutions Group?
If you’re looking for a company with SQL and reporting expertise, that is onshore, easy to work with, has good communication and solid follow through, then SQL Solutions Group would be a great choice.

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The case study below was submitted by Russell Millwee, Manager of Network Services at Tuesday Morning

Brief description of Tuesday Morning and SQL Server usage environment:
Tuesday Morning began in 1974 as a purveyor of excess inventory across numerous categories. We are headquartered in Dallas, where we began, and we have some 500 stores across most of the U.S. Microsoft SQL Server is our primary database environment for all backend tools. These are primarily our point-of-sale system, data warehouse, and all merchandising and business intelligence systems. We also have an in-house integration tool that relies on SQL Server.

Why did Tuesday Morning choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
We knew about Randy and SSG from a former DBA who had worked with Randy at Match.com. After a different DBA left for another opportunity, we were a bit lost without that SQL expertise. We contacted Randy and liked the level of expertise he and SSG brought to the table. We’ve been leaning on them pretty heavily for help with what we can’t handle ourselves.

Describe the scope of the work SQL Solutions Group undertook for Tuesday Morning.
SQL Solutions Group supports our Tier 1 systems—merchandising, point-of-sale, data warehousing, business intelligence, and the integration server.

We’re running everything on VMWare, and most of the work has focused on optimizing volumes, like allocating paravirtual SCSI adapters, formatting volumes with 64k block size, etc. There’s also index maintenance, work on back-ups and restores, DB integrity checks, and installation of SentryOne SQL Sentry for monitoring and alerting.

SSG has also worked with our compliance team on reporting from our HR system. For example, every day we get a matrix report generated by SQL Server that includes all new hires and terminations. This dictates work for adding new users and their permissions, or deactivating users in the system. And there’s also the day-to-day care of the systems, or addressing issues at come up, even in the middle of the night or on weekends. SSG is great at getting to the root of the problem.

Recently, SSG helped us set up a new database availability group to help us handle RF scanner traffic for price markdowns in stores. That’s a lot of read data coming in from stores every night. Randy helped us build this DAG to help with all the reads, so we’ll be rolling this out across the chain in the coming months.

What were the outcomes of this work?
We see great improvements in performance across the board. We used to have a lot of trouble with our overnight batch process that would start at midnight and run to 6 a.m., and now it’s running much better with fewer interruptions. There are far fewer calls in the middle of the night to address issues. We used to have to reboot our point-of-sale application issue every Friday, but after SSG did their work, this problem has virtually gone away. With SQL Sentry, we have much better monitoring, alerting, and visibility into what is going on. We know when jobs are going too long, or when backups fail, and that’s something auditors like to see.

How did the project help Tuesday Morning be more competitive and/or productive?
The application supporting price markdowns is a big deal for us, because in the past, we had to do it in bulk, for everything. With the hand-held scanners in the store, the team member can scan certain products and do the markdown right then on one or two products instead of an across-the-board markdown. That kind of agility means laser-focused pricing strategy on certain products or product categories. That’s an advantage.

SSG will also be helpful with SQL Server licensing, helping us know what we need, what we can get rid of, and where we can be more efficient. There’s potentially noticeable ROI from that because SQL Server licensing makes a big impact on the bottom line.

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SQL Solutions Group?
SSG offers unparalleled SQL expertise and knowledge. They’re really the cream of the crop.

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The case study below was submitted by Bryan Evans, Application Development Manager at Orbit Irrigation

Brief description of Orbit and SQL Server usage environment: Orbit is the world leader in manufacturing and supplying irrigation, misting, and home improvement products to homeowners in forty countries across five continents. We use SQL for business-critical applications and reporting.

Why did Orbit choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
SSG came highly recommended from the organizer of SQL Saturday. We were facing a significant performance issue within our point-of-sale database and needed outside help to resolve the issue.

Describe the scope of the work SQL Solutions Group undertook for Orbit.
SSG came in and did a health check and overall system review with us. We found there were many underlying problems in our SQL environment, causing significant performance issues.  SSG helped us map out a course of action and we started to see improvements immediately.

Our SQL environment became stable and we gained significant performance on reports and forms.

How did the project help Orbit be more competitive and/or productive?
We don’t have a fulltime DBA on staff, so it is difficult for us to maintain our SQL environment.  Having SSG working for us freed up valuable time for my developers to focus on what they excelled at, rather than trying to manage and upgrade SQL.

What kind of ROI did you realize from the work done by SQL Solutions Group?
Our ROI is found in uptime. We were able to keep our SQL environment up and running with little down time.

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SQL Solutions Group?
SSG has been great to work with. They continue to help us with disk performance and corruption issues that would have taken us down for days. I feel 100% confident when working with SSG that they will resolve any issue we face.

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The case study below was submitted by Alexandr Anaya, IT Director at Northwestern Management 

Description of Northwestern Management (NWM) and SQL Server usage environment:
We are a Dental Service Organization with 33 dental practices in South/Central Florida plus a corporate office.  We use SQL Server as the backbone of our Practice Management System.

Why did NWM choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
We were looking for a company with a deep level of expertise, as our DB was corrupted and we needed to address it right away. We also had serious performance issues, and nobody could detect the root cause of it. The loss of revenue we had before was more than you can measure; we were losing patients because of the system without even knowing it!

Our software provider recommended SQL Solutions Group.

Describe the scope of the work SSG undertook for NWM:
With SSG, we fixed the corruption, and from there we did a complete assessment and a dramatic tune up. This was followed by a migration to SQL 2012 and to the latest version of our application. SSG is also monitoring our database. Right now, we are building our Report Portal with SSRS, replacing all the Excel spreadsheets we are still using (hundreds of them).

What were the outcomes of this work?
We used to have SQL crashes and slowdowns quite a few times every month (sometimes every day) affecting all our users and patients. With all that SSG did, the application is very stable. In fact, we haven’t had any other issues with performance, which translates into revenue, and of course improves the company’s image.

We continue to work with SSG because they have proven they have the expertise and commitment. With SSG’s help, my team and I can focus on projects instead of trying to keep the database running.

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SSG?
Randy and his team are the best around! Without a doubt, partnering with SSG is one of the best decisions we’ve made.

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Description of BROWZ and SQL Server usage environment:
BROWZ is a third-party compliance SAAS company. We use SQL Server as our backend database and also use SQL Reporting Services as our reporting engine.

Why did BROWZ choose SQL Solutions Group for its database needs?
It was really a combination of location, expertise and personal touch. We wanted someone who “got” what BROWZ was about and was willing to work with us in a flexible fashion. We weren’t looking for just a monitoring solution but someone who were SQL experts and we felt Randy and team were a good fit.

Describe the scope of the work SQL Solutions Group undertook for BROWZ.
SSG really has turned into our remote DBAs. We use them for everything from architectural guidance, to performance tuning, to day-to-day M&S support for more complex issues. Most recently we engaged SSG to help us migrate from SQL 2008 to SQL 2012 with encryption.

What were the outcomes of this work?
The project has gone well and they have been around for every step of the trip. They knew our environment from a SQL standpoint, probably better than we did. SSG helped provide guidance on the overall approach including hardware specifications, network configurations, and migration strategy. The BROWZ team is pretty strong—but it was great having some outside expertise to confirm direction and also provide some additional expertise. We did all the environments as part of the upgrade and actually just completed the production migration this past week.

What else has SQL Solutions Group helped with?
We have engaged SSG to help with a few performance issues that were complex in nature. By engaging the team, it allowed the BROWZ team to focus on the core application components, while letting SSG really focus on the backend performance. SSG’s ability to help tune the system has really led to a significant improvement on the overall performance.

How has SSG help BROWZ be more competitive and productive?
It allowed us to focus on our core competencies, while giving expertise in all areas. We probably don’t have the need for a full-time DBA,  so this provides the best of both worlds.

What kind of ROI did you realize from the work done by SQL Solutions Group?
More than an ROI—it really allows me a more flexible budget without sacrificing quality. This allows me to look at work as being more project based, while still allowing BROWZ to have DBA expertise when called upon.

What would you tell a company that was considering using the services of SQL Solutions Group?
Smart move! At the end of the day what I like best about SSG and Randy is that I know they have the expertise but they are also dependable business partners. I trust their input, but also know that if something goes wrong,  they will be there to help us figure out the issue and get it resolved. We haven’t seen anyone else provide the level of consistent expertise SSG does.

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