About Horváth & Partners Horváth & Partners is an international Management Consultancy business with over 270 employees and total revenue of over 58 million Euros (Financial Year 2005/06). The company was founded in 1981 in Stuttgart and is now
one of the top 20 consultancy fi rms in Germany. With four offices in Germany and branches in Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, the USA, as well as representatives in Spain and the Czech Republic, Horváth & Partners now has a presence in eight different countries.
In recognition of its innovative work, Horváth & Partners was given the “TOP 100 Innovators 2005” seal of approval for medium-sized businesses. In 2006 the company celebrated its 25th anniversary.
The Problem
The file servers at Horváth & Partners had to be rebooted often and at irregular time intervals, be it to install Windows updates or to exchange hardware. As a result of heavy usage, in particular the deletion and alteration of data, the servers had become very badly fragmented. “One of our Windows 2000 servers needed over an hour before it fully booted”, reports Ralf Linka, Administrator at
Horváth & Partners. The standard defragmenter delivered with Windows failed to convince: “To do a defragmentation and continue working at the same time is not possible with the Windows standard tool. We are also not convinced by the level of defragmentation reached”. Not only did booting the server take so long, it also became clear when running operations that storage processes and read access were both requiring more and more time.
The Solution
“We needed a solution that was reasonably priced, and could be implemented during normal operations without having an impact on performance”. Horváth & Partners made enquiries with their system retailer who recommended O&O Defrag to them. “We’ve also got the option of centrally administering job plans and carrying out the installation over the network!” said Ralf Linka. And when asked how quick his server was after a defragmentation using O&O Defrag, Mr. Linka took great pleasure in telling us that it now took just 5 minutes, resembling the time taken upon a first installation. In addition, Horváth & Partners have also installed the O&O Defrag Pro Version on all their workstations: “We have noticed a very strong improvement in performance here too”.
The Product
O&O Defrag Server Edition is not just the ideal and specifically optimized defragmentation software for all Windows Server based Operating Systems – it also contains O&O Defrag Network Management, which allows for the distribution and implementation of O&O Defrag across an entire network. O&O Defrag is the newest generation of the very successful O&O Defrag. Simply, quickly, and securely, you can get the maximum performance out of your expensive hardware investments – and all this with only a tiny investment of time and energy! The new O&O Defrag Professional Edition for Windows-based workstations unlocks the hidden Performance of your computer.