Fire From Smoking Cables Fails To Seriously Damage Persona?s Health

Networking distributor Persona was the victim of a small electrical fire last week, forcing staff to resort to processing orders on paper after the company?s computer system was put out of action.

Persona finance director Paul Staines admitted that some power cables had started smoking, but maintained that the distributor had not lost any business because of the fire.

?Saying we had a fire is being a little over-dramatic. Our electrical supply started to overheat badly, and the incoming power cables started smoking,? he said.

Staines added: ?At no stage were we unable to take calls. Because of our new uninterrupted power supply, the system stayed up all the time. Our sales people were completely accessible and were taking orders all the time.?

The computer system went down for a couple of hours.

Julia Jones, Persona director of education and services, attributed the problem to an overloading of the electrical supply after about 50 extra staff were moved over from the Loudwater site as a result of integrating Top Log into Persona.

?The system wasn?t designed for this many extra people. We will be upgrading it over the next few weeks,? she said.