When you’re Tools fail you

What would you do if you went into work tomorrow and the power was out with no sign of it coming on for 8 hours? What about the internet or resource on the internet?

I’ve thought about this alot as many of my customers call in a frenzy when their internet is down. As the recent cutting of the Mediterranean Fiber cable shows, business’s that rely on technology, even electricity have a host of challenges to contend with. Supporting clients remotely through the phone (i.e. technical support) and the internet (i.e. Voip, remote monitoring and control tools) are critical to any company that relies on computers.

What exactly constitutes a dependency? If a computer, phone or service is not available how many staff have nothing to do? Does your company have a policy of sending everyone home for the day as some coporations in distribution do? If you removed that service from your staff, would they still be able to service your clients? It’s not just the large corporations that require a reliable infrastructure on which to conduct daily business. Many of our clients are small with less than 25 employees. But with the loss of any of their communication abilities leads to a completely new workflow to deal with that loss. Rarely do companies ever plan for this situation and only wait hoping the service comes back on. In the meantime, the type of business dictates the size of revenue loss. Some companies cannot lookup important information on the internet previously distributed on DVD’s and some cannot place order’s.

What if you’re business relies on the intent, leased lines, corporate network for day to day business? Electricity? I know it sounds ridiculous to some but if you own your own business you won’t.