Imagine this scenario… there’s a “real” pandemic and you’re charged with acquiring 5000 laptops for your company so the entire company can work from home – given that the country’s been moreorless quarantined by now. Your people aren’t coming into your company’s physical spaces, your offices or warehouses, sprawled all over the place in 10 different cities.
But wait. Office Depot, and everywhere else for that matter, sold-out of laptops a week ago. Who you gonna call? You’d call Agility Recovery Solutions. They’ve got your laptops. And your servers, your monitors, your workspaces, your cabling, your satellite dishes… all by the truck load. And of course the generators you’ll need to run all that stuff on too. Heck, knowing the good folk at Agility they’ve probably got your coffee hot and ready to go, and already know whether your people take cream or sugar.
But if you are a business continuity manager worth your salary you’d have already established a relationship with Agility Recovery Solutions as part of your disaster relief/business continuity plan, right? Right!
At their Atlanta facility open house on May 13, 2009, Agility’s Operations Manager, Chandler Smith, told me that he had taken a rather panicky call from someone looking for 5000 laptops during the recent swine flu, er, “media outbreak.” The scenario of needing lots of temporary gear is not slightest bit far-fetched when people and businesses feel threatened, or are in an actual crisis or disaster-related situation.
Also at the Agility open house yesterday, I spoke with Jeff Jacobson of Oodalink. For my geek pleasure, Jeff demo’d a communications center that fit in a TSA-approved carry-on case. This was a portable, satellite-based, broadband wireless network in a box – complete with battery power. Available from Agility too.
The satellite/GPS component in the kit is from Inmarsat, and you can watch a cool video about connecting one of those puppies up here. Easy as pie. Even I could do it… with a couple of years of training. 😉 And by that time, maybe Oodalink will be making the kit in a nice shade of pink too, for a very reasonable price. But I diverge…
A disease-based pandemic may not necessarily impact terestial broadband infrastructure; however, a Katrina-scenario sure can. And who wants to have to stop Twittering in a crisis? Not me!
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