Over the last couple years I’m sure you’ve heard of disaster planning, prevention or recovery. But what do those things really mean? In the IT world that usually means what would happen if you have a catastrophic server failure. The disaster plan may include the time frame to get replacement hardware quickly and a temporary solution while you are waiting on the new hardware. Depending on your needs and how long you are willing to be down, that could be as simple as a good backup plan or as robust as redundant servers and a second location replicating live that can be turned up in a moment’s notice. There is so much more to it! What if your building was gone? Can your employees work from home, or would you need temporary space? Can you forward your phone lines to and from employee’s home or a temporary space quickly? What if the disaster was with your primary vendor, do you have a backup supplier?
Future Link knows that it cannot know everything you would need to put together a FULL business readiness disaster plan, but over the years we have built a strong team of customers and partners that can help you plan for the disaster, or help when it strikes. Future Link IT Partners include…
First a business insurance and risk management company. They can help you evaluate your coverage, understand what your policy will and will not cover, as well as advise you to common gaps in coverage to make sure you are covered in your time of need.
Next is a disaster recovery company – this provider can not only build a disaster recovery plan binder, so all of the important information is at your fingertips in the case of an emergency, but they can help you clean up and rebuild your facility if the disaster happens. They even have resources to arrange temporary office and warehouse space during the reconstruction.
Another important part that most people do not think of is their phone service. We have a variety of phone system and support companies to help you from as little as setting up an emergency call forward to implementing a VoIP solution,(so in the case of a disaster all of the lines could forward to the employee cell or home numbers and customers not even know that you had a disaster).
This is just a small part of our network, and we only refer out quality providers that either we use personally, or have helped customers over the years. Make sure you are ready in your time of need. Here is a great resource if you want to get some more information (http://www.ready.gov/business) or call Future Link IT, and ask how we get started to put together a disaster plan for your business.
Chris Higgins
Sales Manager
Future Link IT
Direct Number: 224-523-8063