Just as we did after Hurricane Irene in 2011, we review the steps we took with our customers and our own business. We are also noting what lessons we can take away for the next event.

There were a couple major differences from Hurricane Irene. In this storm, our home and office (new location, but in the same general vicinity) were both effected the same way. We lost power in both locations nearly at the same time, and power was restored at nearly the same time. Also unlike Irene, we had moved our systems to our cloud platform rather than hosting it in our own office. Doing so provided us the ability to continue to use our business tools to support our clients while our own power was not available. This is one of the benefits of cloud computing – assuming it is configured and designed correctly. For more information on the cloud, here.

Pre-Storm

As we did with Irene, we added frequent manual reviews of each client’s systems, particularly the systems responsible for backup. We increased the frequency of copying business data offsite to keep the chance of loss low. We also checked the systems offsite to make sure they were ready to recover too. Since the weather could potentially effect more than one client, it was important to reduce the time to recover for each one.

During the Storm

As the storm came through, we continued to monitor systems in each client location. Even as our power was lost in our office and our home, we were still able to continue our monitoring using mobile technologies (iPad on Verizon LTE for example). Unlike Irene, Hurricane Sandy took power out in our area on Monday early evening and at least one client earlier than that.

Post-Storm

In the morning, we remotely were able to check to see if our clients’ systems were still operational and provided updates to each of them. Many customers had trouble getting into their offices because of various reasons including homes without power, problems with the transit system, and downed trees. Many therefore worked remotely from coffee houses or other locations where they could find a place to plug in and connect. Interestingly enough, mobile data communication systems were available even when we were unable to make voice calls.

Unlike Irene, the major problem that effected businesses was prolonged nature of the power outages. For one customer that was completely down, we were able to recover them to our Triada Recovery Cloud and, as employees received power and connectivity, they were able to at least continue to process orders and run their business. One day we even opened our offices to them so that they could have several people come work in one location. It was important for that business to continue to work with their clients and show that they were still in business. Unfortunately, many businesses lose customers during a time like this as their clients go elsewhere and don’t come back. I learned that tidbit from my mother. My mother owned a hair and beauty salon for many years. Her experience was that even though her clients preferred her service, when she took vacation or was otherwise away (like during an illness), people still wanted to get their hair done and had it done by others. Some of those won’t come back.

Final thoughts

As I look at some of the locations that were harder hit than the NYC metro area such as the Jersey shoreline, it is obvious that this could have been a bigger concern than it was. Fortunately we had the right kinds of processes and systems in place that allowed us and our customers to get through it. But like anything, there is always room for improvement. One lesson we learned from Irene resulted in our increasing our level of communication with our clients, during and immediately after the storm so they didn’t have any surprises as to what they were stepping into.

Something that was very obvious to our clients this time around was that although they were confident we would be able to recover their primary systems or keep them running in their existing location; they weren’t as that they could go someplace to do their work when their power or communications were not working in their own homes. In addition, they weren’t happy that they had to rely on the utilities to return power to their location and are looking at alternative power sources.

Knee-Jerk Reactions, Again!

Unfortunately, one reaction this time which I anticipate (which happened during Irene as well) was that businesses may be lured into putting their data into the cloud. Depending on your cloud provider and their design, this may be a good solution. But at least for one colleague, their cloud phone system was run out of a datacenter in downtown NYC which was completely out. They had to scramble to have their phone numbers rerouted to new systems. Cloud is not a panacea. Proper planning needs to take place first, and of course your trusted IT adviser would be the first person to ask.