Whatever your opinions are on global warming we do seem to be experiencing climate change in New Zealand. Looking back over the past hundred years we’ve had some really hefty storms, eight or ten really notable ones, and over half of those have been in the past twenty years. Our weather appears to be becoming more tropical and if this is a trend rather than a blip then we have some planning to do.
The storm last month certainly received its fair share of media coverage. There was flooding, trees falling on cars and houses, roofs being blown off and general disruption to transport and normal daily life. However, the most newsworthy aspect of that Tuesday night storm was how much impact it had on power distribution. Some areas were without electricity for several days. It cost people freezer-loads of food and it cost many businesses a lot more than that.
How much more? Well, it’s actually rather hard to quantify. The impact of any sort of business interruption can range from the simple cost of staff sitting around doing nothing through to the expense of lost business, spoiled goods and even consequential damages. I am going to look at a few scenarios that something as simple as April’s power outages can cause. (I say “simple” as there are many worse scenarios that can impact on your business.)
Having the lights out in your office will generally mean that the phones aren’t working and all people can do is old-fashioned filing and paperwork… maybe a few meetings and some planning on the white-board as well… but not many businesses have that sort of requirement sitting waiting to do in case there’s an outage. The reality is that people do as much as they can on their mobile phones and that may as well be from home, particularly if there’s no indication as to when the power may come back on. If email is hosted externally, Office 365 or some other cloud-based service, at least your staff can still maintain normal contact with clients – that is, provided they have access on their phones or from home. So, for many businesses, some productivity can be salvaged from out of the darkness.
The unavailability of other systems has varying impacts. For example, an accounting practice may not be able to carry out the tasks their clients require, but those can always wait until normal services are restored and it is really only lost time. For a travel company they may not be able to carry out bookings and the lost opportunity as customers go elsewhere to book their holidays could be significant. A freight company may end up with trucks idle because they can’t access their schedules and that would be worse still if they handle perishable items like food or medical supplies.
What this all means is that when we’re asked to work on a Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity Plan for one of our clients we start out by looking at parts of the business well outside our traditional IT area – we look at what the business would need access to operationally as quickly as possible and what the various other requirements are that follow on from that. These actually differ depending on which we are helping to build: Disaster Recovery or Business Continuity.
That’s another topic altogether, the difference between Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans, so I am not going to attempt to clarify that right here. (Email me if you’d like to discuss it; it has been very topical lately!)
So for your business to run during an outage like the one that the April storm caused, what do you really need? If there’s one thing to learn from the April events it’s that all businesses need to think about what would be required to keep things running during an outage or in the event of a disaster and then put something in place to ensure that those requirements can be met within reasonable timeframes. You probably won’t have an earthquake or volcanic eruption to deal with, but you will certainly have storms and other events that take out power, comms, or access to your information/office for whatever reason.
And as for global warming? I don’t believe anyone really knows whether it’s solvable, but I am certain we can adapt. Humans always do.
Philip Adamson, Managing Director, Outsource IT
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