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Advanced Technical Solutions
A team of the most seasoned technicians for the most difficult system challenges
Database Security
System interruptions occur when processes result in system instability.
Performance Tuning
Optimizing system performance by modifying database configuration for quick user response.
System Support
Security breaches or other issues can lead to database corruption, bringing a system to a crawl. We provide emergency support to get you back up and running.
Installs & Migrations
When major redeployment of a system is needed, this can involve equipment, networks, and multiple databases that need to be re-provisioned for new environments.
Epicor Kinetic Support
EpiCenter formed this team of systems engineers, database analysts, and Tier 2 technical support engineers to respond rapidly for a variety of situations. Some are available on an emergency basis, and others can be scheduled. We are here to respond, get you back up and running as soon as possible, and then hopefully preventing these occurrences in the future.
Protecting your system from these kinds of threats is part of a 'Managed Service Agreement,' but as we all know, you may not have known about these kinds of offerings and find yourself ‘in crisis’.
PROTECTING AGAINST CYBER THREATS
Today’s IT world is fraught with thousands and thousands of denials of service and other infiltrations of data that force all companies to deal with this nuisance. When it becomes more of a nuisance, and an actual attack on your business, you need a better strategy.
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Typically, our customers have a local ‘managed services provider’ (MSP) that supplies laptops, servers, resell services, and are generally the ‘go to’ for anything that can’t be solved internally. 99% of MSP’s won’t know anything about your ERP system. When a threat is detected, who do they call? They call us.
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A short time ago we had a new customer that had deployed Epicor, including shop floor MES stations. We got a call from their MSP that they had detected a data breach from one of the Epicor ‘terminals’.
Our ATS team logged in and found that the MSP had redeployed an older desktop unit on the shop floor just to provide the MES screen for shop floor staff. That desktop was actually a Windows 7 machine that hadn’t had any security updates for several years, if ever.
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The ATS team detected the threat and ‘battled’ the attack for several hours and was able to prevent the spread of the attack. That machine was disconnected from the system and sent for recycling, and our customer learned a valuable lesson.
FINDING THE ROOT CAUSE
Recently, one of our Epicor customers realized that Material Requirements Planning (MRP) wasn’t finishing its processes, which means that new jobs weren’t making it to the shop floor. This wasn’t happening every day, but at least 2-3 days a week. They called Epicor Technical Service, and found out that their database looked perfectly fine, and no errors were being reported.
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Our ATS team copied their database and redeployed it on one of our servers so we could replicate the problem. We found the same thing – MRP would run fine some days and not on others. We then copied their data onto a new database, and MRP ran just fine all the time.
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The ATS team then looked at the customizations that had been done and found a ‘Business Process Manager’ (BPM) routine that was put in place to change the way a certain part was scheduled. That BPM would ‘lock’ the record, and if that record was required by MRP, then it would stop the MRP process while MRP ‘waited’ for the record to unlock.
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So, in this case the customer didn’t do anything wrong, the system coincidentally was accessing the same information for two different reasons and there was a conflict. The fact that it didn’t happen all the time made the mystery that more complicated.
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Our ATS team is there to untangle these issues, whether they are from a corrupt database or just an inadvertent mistake. If you don’t have a database analyst or systems engineer, we’re here to help you.