The 2011 Super Outbreak, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy are just three of the most powerful natural disasters to hit the U.S for the few past years. Because of natural disasters, the livelihood of many Americans have been completely washed away in the matter of minutes. And businesses? A majority of those affected have used drastic measures to painstakingly redeem the little they could salvage. Indeed, desperate times call for desperate measures. Unfortunately, a key business operation that suffers the greatest during such events is communications. Without it, businesses have no way to communicate with their customers, or each other during the greatest time of need. Because of this, many businesses have turned to the aid of effective Business Continuity planning.mountainsphoto.ru
Business Continuity covers multiple sets of development and preparatory efforts. These efforts help businesses save and recover information, and/or operate their critical functions during, and after, serious incidents or disasters. Nowadays, telecommunication service providers offer solutions that ensure Business Continuity and effective disaster recovery to their clients. One solution, is to automatically re-route calls from one location to another in a matter of seconds. This could include any communication device such as landline phones, mobile devices and PC-based softphones. This type of solution assures organizations with full access to their communications from any location. Inbound telephone services will continue to be fully operational during most devastating catastrophes.
From the service provider’s perspective, this and other capabilities rely heavily on using a highly reliable and effective geo-redundant network. Without this, a service provider cannot provide the full, failsafe contingency plan that is necessary for businesses in distress. The network is the backbone of any hosted telecom service, and cannot function properly without it. There is no greater relief to a business owner than to know that their phone system sits on a solid, reliable network that is supported by multiple layers of redundancy in the case of an emergency.
No amount of preparation can completely spare any business from natural calamities. Sadly, this is a fact of life. Nature is a difficult enemy to beat. However, there are ways to prepare for the worse, and lessen the blow of the unforeseen. The best armor you can have is knowing your business’ vulnerabilities, developing redundancies, and working with service providers that you can trust with your contingency plan, and Business Continuity.
