Is your business ready for a tornado, flood, ice storm and now potentially earthquakes and even mundane fire? No matter what product or service your organization provides, customers expect you to be available to handle their needs regardless of any strife.
In the past, business continuity was complicated and expensive with backup sites, continuously contracted contingency equipment/facilities, and myriad failover steps. Today, there are much more inexpensive and easier answers. At all times, your customer face consists of 3 facets: website, phone, and e-mail.
You can host your website offsite for less that 3% of the annual cost of a server, software, and deployment/maintenance of a web server. In addition, you enjoy much better uptime and faster website access far away from your geography. It’s preferrable to host your website at your Domain Registrar so that you can make changes to DNS records without the contacting an ISP. In normal business or times of a disaster, your website should be available, easily found by keyword search, and assist in converting business.
When your phones lose power, customers calling you will either get a busy signal or a frustrating continuous ring that will never be answered. Generally for a few dollars per month, you can add remote forwarding to your main phone line. In the event of a disaster at your business location, you then either access a web portal or call a remote forwarding number and forward calls to another location or even an emergency cell. It’s quick and easy with accessibility from any where there is Internet access or cell service.
With Cloud Computing, it’s now more cost-effective than ever ($5 per mailbox per month) to have your e-mail accessible for you and your customers with a 99.9% availability, geo-redundant data centers, and higher security than you could achieve internally. Basically, you’re e-mail runs in disaster mode all the time without the worry of restore, failover, or even simple server replacement/upgrade and maintenance. If you have your data and line of business application in the cloud as well, you’ve greatly reduced your information technology infrastructure and have a more nimble business that you can focus fully on servicing customers in normal and exigent times.