Snowy UK Grindsto a Halt!

It's easy to mock those not able to cope with a few centimetres of snow. My sympathies do go out to those who have really suffered.

Here, we are feeling a little smug given how well Backup Direct has coped during the recent flurries. We'd like to think it is all been the result of good planning - and it largely is - but it also takes the right people with the right attitude to keep going.

The key to it working well is having IT systems designed for resilience, largely outsourced to specialists. I guess you could say we eat our own dog food. I thought I'd outline some the key components we use:

- Business systems: our core business system is NetSuite which is a fully managed, fully hosted solution for small-medium businesses providing accounting, help-desk, sales, marketing and billing functions in one integrated solution. It's web-based and hosted by NetSuite directly. Not only does this provide flexible working arrangements in normal situations, it also means that during the recent bad weather, those that lived too far away from the office, simply logged on from home and carried on as normal.  The same system allows staff to spend time working at home (sales planning or prospecting time) and even allows those with a cold to carry on working - without coughing a spluttering over every one else in the office.

- Telephones: we rely on both traditional fixed line phones as well as an outsourced voice-over-ip (Voip) solution called Callagenix. Like NetSuite, this provides day-to-day flexibility. But for anyone stuck at home during the snow, we simply configured the system so that in-bound calls were routed automatically to their home-office land-line. Many employees also have voip phone at home - so they can carry on making outbound and internal 'business' calls as if they were still in the office.

- Email and office: here too we outsource, using a full hosted office environment. This covers Outlook email (based on Hosted Exchange) and hosted desktop for typical Microsoft applications. Just like NetSuite and Voip, users can have full access to all their work at home in exactly the same way as if they were in the office. They can even print documents to the office or home printers.

- Core services: naturally, our core offerings are largely automated and managed out of multiple geographically separate data centres. Our customer's data is always held in at least two locations, both of which are tier-4 hosting centres. These provide power redundancy with additional reserve diesel generators and connectivity redundancy from multiple ISVs. An interruption in the delivery of customer data is practically impossible.

The net result of all the above is that Backup Direct was able to continue through the week of bad weather with little or no disruption to our customers and the services we provide. Indeed, many staff reported they 'got more done' working from home during the week.

So perhaps we were lucky, but I'd like to think we planned some things correctly too. If anyone would like more details on the systems we use and how it might help their own business become more efficient/resilient - feel free to contact me by email: brett@backupdirect.net. Note, that these systems are not ones we sell or profit from - so I can give some impartial advice if required - the good and the not so good!