Power Outage Play

Olynick wants to make sure all his customers are aware of the business-continuity services Basis offers, including a new networking monitoring and backup service that the company launched about a month ago. Olynick estimates that only about 10 percent of his clients have a plan and strategy for dealing with crises of last week's nature.

"Ninety percent are rolling the dice and hoping nothing happens," Olynick said.

It's likely that many of those clients are going to be looking to Basis for a solution after last week's outage. Olynick expects his business-continuity/disaster-recovery business to double over the next year. This from a company whose services business jumped to 60 percent of sales for the quarter ended June 30, up from 20 percent in the same period a year earlier.

Ironically, the power outage, which hit 50 million people in the United States and Canada, was the result itself of a lack of investment in redundant power systems and better technology. That lack of investment led to untold billions of dollars in lost business and data. Every business that does not invest in business continuity is playing Russian roulette. And it is up to solution providers to drive that cold, hard fact home.

Basis' aim is to bring the right level of business continuity to second-tier small and midsize enterprise customers at an affordable price. Strategies that require $200,000-plus redundant servers with generators in a parking lot are not cost-effective for small and midsize businesses. Fortunately, there are a host of manufacturers with solid channel programs that solution providers can partner with to provide business continuity to companies of all sizes with solutions ranging from tape backup and power supplies to remote mirroring to completely redundant systems.

Every solution provider on the planet should be bringing business continuity to their customers. We live in strange times,and they are getting stranger every day. Solution providers that don't bring some sort of business-continuity solution to their customers are doing a disservice to themselves and their clients.

What vendors are you working with on business continuity? Let me know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at [email protected].