Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Preparing for a natural disaster -
Natural disasters are an unfortunate reality. As hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, natural disasters are a threat to all businesses, especially SMEs. In fact, the Ministry of Labour of the United States estimates that more than 40 percent of companies reopens after a natural disaster. Among other companies, at least 25 percent will close within two years of the disaster to occur. 
Jane Cage, COO of Heartland Technology Solutions, a Microsoft partner, is Joplin, Missouri, where devastating tornado killed 160 people in May 2011. With a third of the destroyed city, Heartland Technology Solutions came together to help customers as much as possible while trying to rebuild. Cage discusses the need for disaster recovery plans and how to prepare for natural disasters
Channelpro-SMB.? What are the consequences for companies that are not prepared for something like that
Cage: I do not think anyone in Joplin never considered something this devastating would happen to them. For all of us, planning for disaster recovery is one of those things we would have done if we had time. It is not a priority for everyone, everyone is wearing an invisibility cloak, thinking it would never really happen.
In Joplin, the Internet provider for top companies was on the south side of the city, where the tornado cut through. Anyone north of that lost their Internet connectivity. We had some people who were prepared enough to have a second source of Internet or through telephone lines or DSL lines, and we had a telephone service through most of Joplin other than the destroyed area. 
Having a second source of Internet turned out to be very important for some of our customers. For those who do not, especially those who have had exchange on site, which proved to be a huge problem. We went probably 10 days before the Internet was restored in these areas, so if you were on-site exchange, did you face the decision of whether you should change your service to another provider, or if you have to wait for come back. It caused a lot of anxiety for many of our customers and for us to try to understand how to help.
He made them understand the importance of having at least a portion of their off-site infrastructure.
Channelpro-SMB: How service providers can help customers during natural disasters
Cage: We were lucky to have an internet connection to our office, so we had many clients come to us for processing internet orders and make payroll because they are very important pieces. Their livelihood depends on being paid. These are areas where we could help on a temporary basis
Channelpro-SMB.? How SMEs can prepare disaster
Cage: We had a competitor here in Joplin whose office was destroyed. It is interesting to see their equipment in a rack, the rack eventually protect equipment. Who would have thought that would make a difference? But the structure of the rack itself helped save the equipment. Most do not think that as part of disaster preparedness, but it made a big difference.
Everything on site must be in a cured part. One of our major customers had their infrastructure projects in the basement, which was a blessing. The fact that it was underground rather than above saved their stuff.
From our customers in the SMB space, people who are most affected were the people who ran their operations out of their laptops. People are not much on safeguarding their laptops that could be at home or left the office. Therefore, they lost all kinds of information that they had no way to recover. Off-site or online backup is a very powerful piece to be able to retrieve the information you need
Channelpro-SMB :. What is the biggest delivery you learned after the Joplin tornado?
Cage: There is no such thing as too much fault tolerance. It is a small bet with a great return. To spend $ 25-70 per month, and then be able to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars of information, is the kind of bet that everyone should be placed. It is the kind of small insurance that will pay big dividends when something happens.
Social media have proven to be an incredible source of information for all of us. It's how we found out a lot of what was happening in Joplin after the tornado, with television towers down and the newspaper did not work very well, someone who had social media or Facebook or Twitter had on smartphones, we were able to communicate almost instantly find and what was happening. So even though I love social media to see what my friends are on vacation, and watch last series of photos of someone, it really turned out to be useful here in terms of dissemination of information about the place where to go for resources and what was available.
0 comments:
Post a Comment