Winter and Business Continuity plans

The recent winter weather resulted in thousands of people being without power and probably effected hundred of businesses. As a result there was a great deal of lost revenue from closed businesses and lost productivity due to workers not being able to get to work. In order to minimize the lost revenue and productivity a business should have a business continuity plan to address situations. A few key strategies to keep the business running is to host critical IT and Voice systems at a data center with server collocation. When power goes down at the main office the critical systems are up and running. Remote workers can get to the systems with Indiana DSL Internet and a VPN connection. VoIP PBX solutions housed at the data center could take incoming calls and route to cell or home phones of home workers. If workers are in areas that don't have power or phone service at the very least messages are going to voice mail. I was able to work from a home office yesterday and was fully productive as I could get phone calls from customer and access all business IT systems remote to conduct my daily business. My productivity may have been down after 2 hours of snow shoveling, but I was at least able to do all the normal activities I do at the office.