IBM Disaster Recovery Center Buzzes After Attacks

As rescue crews sorted through the rubble at the World Trade Center site, employees from retail brokerage Tucker Anthony were in the midst of moving to a bucolic setting 40 miles away in the woods of New York state.

Tucker Anthony had about 300 employees in 1 World Financial Center, across the street from the two World Trade Center towers that were hit by hijacked airplanes on Sept. 11 and then collapsed, leaving a total of more than 6,500 people dead or missing.

In the weeks following the disaster, the brokerage firm's ability to access critical data and rebuild its systems underscored the disaster recovery business's evolution from a simple insurance policy for back-up equipment to one focusing on highly orchestrated emergency services.

Tucker Anthony turned to IBM, which has 3,000 employees working on recovery efforts after the attacks in both Washington D.C. and the Pentagon, including a team helping federal and local agencies.

This kind of work, called business continuity and recovery, is part of IBM's $33 billion global services business, which has become an increasing percentage of the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer giant's $88 billion in total revenues in 2000.

In turn, it has made IBM the envy of some other computer makers, such as Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer. Indeed, Hewlett and Compaq said on Sept. 4 that they would merge in part to beef up their services offering.

From Phones To Desks To Computers

IBM's disaster recovery team provides a range of services and hardware, such as restoring networks, laptop and desktop computers and providing temporary workspace to shipping out new replacement equipment, says Todd Gordon, IBM's business continuity and recovery services general manager.

With many financial customers both in the World Trade Center and in neighboring buildings, IBM began fielding calls before the World Trade Center buildings had even collapsed.

"We got our first call at 9:10," Gordon says, just 22 minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The first tower toppled within the hour.

As the day went on, customers with contracts and those who did not wanted help with everything from figuring out how to get in touch with their employees to how to patch their data back together. In some cases, he says, the needs were more dramatic.

"It was 'Help, I'm out of business. Do you have a place we can go?'" Gordon says.

For Tucker Anthony, and about two dozen other companies, that place ended up being IBM's 175,000-square-foot building in the hills just north of the New York-New Jersey border. Ever since, that normally quiet recovery center has been buzzing with adrenaline.

Behind Door No. 3, Tucker Anthony

Behind one of the doors in the four-story complex is Tucker Anthony's 600-square-foot suite where the company is rebuilding its front-office data, including human resources, operations and accounting records.

A handful of technical employees have made the trek there for 10 days, but the company hopes to close its makeshift center and move to a temporary location in downtown Manhattan during the week of Sept. 24, says Tucker Anthony's Paul Stringer, who heads the technology operations at the site.

Stringer, who works in the windowless data room, says the company's recovery plan, set up 4 years ago, worked as hoped. The company backed up its data daily and had the tapes picked up early that morning by data storage firm Iron Mountain.

"[Iron Mountain] sends the data up to IBM, we meet them up here," Stringer says. "They load the tapes and we try to start up transmission services."

Analysts Like IBM'S Broader Outsourcing

IBM wasn't the only company helping businesses based in the financial district relocate and reconfigure.

Wayne, Pa.-based SunGard Data Systems and Rosemont, Ill.-based Comdisco, which recently filed for banktrupcy, both said they had at least two dozen customers they were working with after the attacks.

IBM declined to break out revenues for the business continuity division. The business is set up like the insurance business--customers pay monthly fees of $100 a month to $1 million for a recovery plan. After the disaster occurs, IBM then charges a daily fee for using the location, says business continuity and recovery services general manager Todd Gordon.

Gary Helmig, an analyst at SoundView Technology, says that IBM's emphasis on providing a broad range of services, including disaster recovery, will benefit the company going forward.

"Comdisco and a Sungard will be providing recovery services but they don't provide the total outsourcing of the data center," Helmig says.

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