In case of emergency

Among the many lessons we should have learned from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, was the need to put in place replacement and back-up systems that could be deployed rapidly in the event of a catastrophic loss. Florida’s bout with four hurricanes this summer, last year’s Northeast blackout and other, more localized, events are reminders of the need for these replacements and backups.

For IT decision-makers, particularly at midsized and large organizations, there are two primary capabilities that should be deployed: a) an ability to notify employees and others in emergencies using their choice of media and b) a replacement e-mail capability that can be up and running quickly in the event that one’s e-mail system goes down.

There are a number of emergency notification systems currently available that can be easily deployed and used very rapidly. The National Notification Network, for example, provides a hosted offering that allows thousands of people to be contacted with a single telephone call. Recipients can choose whether to be notified via e-mail, cell phone, Blackberry or other device. WiredRed offers a similar, more limited, capability that is essentially a one-way instant messaging system notifying people of emergencies and the like.

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Among the many lessons we should have learned from the events of Sept. 11, 2001, was the need to put in place replacement and back-up systems that could be deployed rapidly in the event of a catastrophic loss. Florida’s bout with four hurricanes this summer, last year’s Northeast blackout and other, more localized, events are reminders of the need for these replacements and backups.

For IT decision-makers, particularly at midsized and large organizations, there are two primary capabilities that should be deployed: a) an ability to notify employees and others in emergencies using their choice of media and b) a replacement e-mail capability that can be up and running quickly in the event that one’s e-mail system goes down.

There are a number of emergency notification systems currently available that can be easily deployed and used very rapidly. The National Notification Network, for example, provides a hosted offering that allows thousands of people to be contacted with a single telephone call. Recipients can choose whether to be notified via e-mail, cell phone, Blackberry or other device. WiredRed offers a similar, more limited, capability that is essentially a one-way instant messaging system notifying people of emergencies and the like.

Replacement e-mail and back-up capabilities should also factor into IT decision-makers’ plans if these systems have not already been deployed. MessageOne, for example, offers a replacement e-mail system that can be deployed rapidly, containing the past 30 days’ worth of data in the mailbox, in the event the primary e-mail system goes down. Managed e-mail security providers like Postini, MessageLabs and FrontBridge, among others, offer more basic systems that will simply spool e-mail to disk and send it on to e-mail servers in a controlled fashion once they go back online. Either way, e-mail continuity is assured.

Imagine both technologies in use during the extreme example of 9/11. An emergency notification system could have alerted employees that worked in the World Trade Center to evacuate the towers immediately after the first plane hit. This notification might have informed workers who had not yet arrived at work and who were in subways and other locations where they might not have been aware of the attack. In the days following 9/11, a back-up e-mail capability might have brought hundreds of businesses back online more quickly, allowing them to continue operations more normally than actually happened.

While disasters of the magnitude of 9/11 are hopefully the exception in the future, the regularity of smaller disruptive events like storms and earthquakes are the norm, and prudence demands that organizations of any size address them.

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