Case Study: A Wakeup Call
Hurricane Charley reinforced the need for disaster planning, especially for companies that deal in electronic communication and data collection.
Only about 60 percent of businesses are doing some kind of disaster recovery planning, according to John Jackson, vice president of business continuity and recovery services for IBM…
...But as Charley approached, businesses that had a plan put them into effect, moving staff and making sure communications, including e-mail, would be available...
Even lawyers need communications during a hurricane. For the Holland & Knight law firm, that meant making sure e-mail, electronic calendars and contact lists all remained available.
The international law firm, which has its roots in the Tampa Bay area, has more lawyers outside Florida than in the state. Lawyers in different offices might be working on the same case. Clients from other areas may need to contact one of the firm's lawyers here, storm or no storm.
"Business continuation is very important to us and servicing our clients is a primary goal," said Ralph Barber, the firm's chief information officer.
Holland & Knight's experience after 9/11 sent it looking for a backup system. Its New York office across from the World Trade Center was out of commission for 70 days. After moving to a hotel, it took a couple of days to restore e-mail.
Today, Barber said a temporary set-up in a hotel could be powered up with e-mail and other electronic links to the firm within hours. The company has a contract with MessageOne in Austin, Texas, to provide Emergency Mail Service.
The night before Charley hit, the firm knew its downtown Tampa office would be closed and power likely would be lost. That's where the lawyers' Blackberry mobile e-mail devices and MessageOne system came into play.
When the service is activated, it alerts employees and e-mail is rerouted to secure servers. When it is deactivated, all messages sent or received are sent to the firm's primary e-mail server. In fact, a few weeks before the hurricane, the system kicked in during a hardware failure at the firm's Miami office.
It does require power and Internet access, but Mike Rosenfelt, executive vice president of MessageOne, says critical employees can be sent to areas where power won't be affected by a storm.
"Some customers are telling us that it's more critical to get e-mail and instant messaging up than phones up because that's how they communicate," said Jackson of IBM.
View a PDF version of the Holland & Knight Case Study from the St. Petersburg Times.
