I have been through several hurricanes and natural disasters. I have seen weeks without access to our office and I have even helped haul servers down flights of stairs so that we could get offices set up and operational.
​There was one thing that I did not worry about at all. I never lost a minute’s sleep over our data or how soon our office could be up and running. In fact, there were moments that I was logged in working during the middle of the hurricane. This is the benefit of cloud computing. We have no redundant servers. No backups. In fact, we have no servers in our office. Nothing to haul down stairs or set up in a remote location. No, we aren’t a small firm. Over 100 people potentially affected by Harvey.
Today I had our Chief Administrative Officer, Emily Mazey and our Employee Experience Officer, Amanda Shook, look into missed time for the week and encourage our team to take advantage of the federal benefits for disaster unemployment. They did. They came back to me and said “Wes, people worked all week. They weren’t unemployed, there are hours charged to clients, the work never stopped”. Wow. We got something right. We were in the cloud. Our team was able to carry on in the midst of the worst hurricane in decades and a flood that was deemed to be a “500 year flood”.
Microsoft 365, in the cloud, gave us uninterrupted email, chat and calendar services.
Our Brand Experience Officer Catherine Seitz and Partner Stan Raines set up a text messaging system for us to communicate and assist others. The communication lines were open.
CCH Engagement and Quickbooks were both hosted in military grade data centers that never went down.
It is a textbook case study for cloud based computing. If you aren’t going to change because it is just the smartest and most efficient way to do business, then consider it for this #1 reason. When a natural disaster strikes, you will be prepared. Your disaster recovery plans will look like ours, a laptop. You are covered.
There was one guy who wasn't stressing over disaster recovery. Our internal IT guy, Cory Dial. Can you picture the Maytag repair man? That’s Cory. Cory is important to our organization, but he can focus on service and strategy.