Mission-critical, mission-driven: how HVO keeps its operations running
Haywood Vocational Opportunities manufactures medical products to strict quality standards while creating meaningful work for adults with disabilities. A long-standing partnership with Katalyst keeps HVO's systems current, protected, and ready for whatever comes next, including a hurricane.
About Haywood Vocational Opportunities
Haywood Vocational Opportunities (HVO) is a nonprofit social enterprise in Waynesville, North Carolina, guided by a simple promise: "We Bring People and Jobs Together." For more than 50 years, HVO has provided vocational training and employment to adults with disadvantages and disabilities.
Today, HVO is also a medical device contract manufacturer producing surgical drapes, kitting, and repackaging under FDA and ISO 13485 quality standards. Its programs include job assessments, community job coaching, and paid work on the production floor, so every order HVO ships supports real careers and independence in the community.
The Challenge
At HVO, technology supports two missions under one roof: a production operation held to medical device standards, and programs that serve adults with disabilities every day. A typical day starts early, with production employees arriving as early as 4:00 a.m., clients beginning work by 8:30, and a second shift running into the evening. Office staff, job coaches, remote users, and clients all rely on the same network, phones, and systems.
Every system that touches product quality must meet the requirements of a regulated medical device manufacturer, with documented changes, validated equipment, and records ready for FDA, ISO, and customer audits. As a nonprofit, HVO plans carefully through an annual budget and uses nonprofit pricing where possible. With ERP, email, and phones increasingly in the cloud and production spread across three buildings, HVO needed infrastructure that stays current, recovers quickly, and can be maintained without interrupting a facility that is almost always running.
The Solution
HVO's relationship with Katalyst began well before a formal managed services agreement, and grew through trust earned in real moments.
From hardware rescues to managed services
When a switch failed and took down part of a building, Katalyst and Cisco SmartNet support had it back up in less than a day. Through ongoing work on servers, switches, and firewalls, the two teams brought the environment to a best-practices setup, including an upgrade from Cisco to Meraki switching. The focus now is steady lifecycle management: refreshing equipment at end of life and keeping hardware and software under support.
Monitoring, backups, and updates that respect production
Katalyst proactively monitors HVO's servers, switches, and backups, investigating issues like a missed backup before HVO has to dig in. On-premises and cloud backup copies replaced the old tape rotation, and patches, firmware, and Meraki updates are scheduled around HVO's shifts, after hours or on weekends.
Standing together through Hurricane Helene
When Hurricane Helene struck Western North Carolina, HVO lost internet for two days, affecting its cloud-based ERP and manufacturing systems. HVO's downtime procedures kept work moving, and before HVO's team could even reach the office, Katalyst had already seen the network go dark and reached out by text to check in.
"I know that whatever crisis that I may encounter, I'm partnering with a good company that's gonna help us get through it. I don't feel like I'm alone."
Nancy Warren, Information Technology Director, Haywood Vocational OpportunitiesThe Results
With a stable foundation and proactive support in place, HVO's environment runs reliably, and issues are caught and resolved before they affect production or programs.
Service was restored in under a day after a failed network switch, a file can be restored from backup in two to three clicks, and scheduled on-premises and cloud backups run throughout the day with zero tapes to change, store, or rely on. Katalyst knows HVO's network well enough to monitor systems and restore data even when HVO's IT director is out of the office, and project scoping and equipment refreshes are planned with HVO's nonprofit budget in mind. As Nancy Warren put it, "With Katalyst we have our systems and everything is in a good spot so I'm not battling huge fires."
Key Takeaways
- Uptime for a facility that never stops. Proactive monitoring and fast recovery keep production and client programs running.
- Updates that respect production. Patches and firmware are scheduled around HVO's shifts, after hours or on weekends.
- Resilient, tape-free backups. On-prem and cloud copies mean faster restores and no tape rotation.
- A partner in a crisis. When Helene hit, Katalyst was one of the first to check in.
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