If you live or work on the East Coast, then this is the question that you have been asked all week. Most of our clients and friends fared well, but many of our clients found that they were without power and/or internet connection for several days (some are actually still out this morning). This gave them a great opportunity to see if their disaster planning and backup plans would actually work… or not.
Having gone through the “powerless” experience ourselves, we thought we would take a moment to share some a couple of things that we learned.
- If you’re not already invested in using Social Media, now might be the time. During the storm and the ensuing power outages we kept track of friends, family, AND local businesses through Facebook and Twitter on our mobile devices. Those businesses that already have a following on these channels had a definite advantage over those that did not. The length of the outage actually prompted our local school system to create a Facebook page because their self-hosted servers were down for almost a week which made getting the word out about school closings very difficult.
- If you rely on on-site, self-hosted solutions for your website and e-mail, you may need to rethink this strategy. Several businesses that we deal with had their e-mail and/or websites taken down for days making communicating with their members, customers, and employees very difficult. Most of these companies have backup power that will work for the occasional brief outage, but nothing that would sustain them for days. Failure of the local infrastructure (i.e. no internet service) also plagued some businesses that had power but still couldn’t get online.
- Off-site hosting was a key to remaining online. Those business that have their e-mail, website, and e-newsletter services housed off-site in a secure data center (with alternate power and internet connection options) fared the best as they did not experience any downtime due to power outages and internet connectivity issues.
- Organizations with an online content management systems had the advantage. Customers who have an online Content Management System (CMS) also had an advantage as they could easily update their website from any internet connection which became critical for clients who did not have connectivity at their office but were able to get online via laptops and other mobile devices from their homes or other locations.
So how did we do?
Relatively well. Our website, help desk, and e-mail are housed offsite in data centers who remained 100% online and connected as expected. This allowed us to provide updates through our website and e-mail via mobile devices and alternative locations while we were waiting to have our office power and connectivity restored.
If you need help…
If you were one of the unlucky businesses, schools, churches, clubs, or volunteer organizations who had problems with power or your internet connection over the past week, contact us to discuss your options. We’ll be happy to work with you to develop a plan that ensures that your organization stays online and connected to your members, customers, and employees in the best way possible.
At KABAM.net, we don’t just build pretty websites, we make websites work!
