Voda One Spreads Business-Continuity Awareness

Before Sept. 11, 60 percent of businesses that experienced a catastrophic event went out of business within two years, according to Gartner. More recent numbers put the figure at 40 percent, but it still shows businesses are not adequately prepared, said Penny McCord, Federal Edge coordinator at Voda One, an Omaha, Neb.-based distributor.

"That's a slight decrease, but without a plan, people are unprepared and make quick, snap decisions," McCord told a crowd of solution providers and commercial and government end users gathered for the conference. "Often those decisions must be re-evaluated and revised, which causes confusion for customers and employees. The reality is customers can't wait. There are so many places to go for goods and services, they will go somewhere else."

In New York, the chief target of the Sept. 11 terrorists, 80 percent of the companies affected by that attack are expected to go out of business within two years, she said.

Of course, terrorist attacks are not the main reason companies need business-continuity plans. Natural disasters, system crashes and power outages are more likely candidates, McCord said.

"You can't wait until a tornado comes to take steps. But the single most important lesson learned from 9/11 is the need to have a plan in place and test the plan and know how to react immediately," she said.

Business continuity has been the focus of this latest road show by Voda One, an Avaya-focused subsidiary of Westcon Group. The series began earlier this year and marks the first time the distributor invited end users to an event, said Bill McFadden, vice president of marketing at Westcon Group.

"Any way we can help the reseller better understand the importance [of business continuity] and the resellers' value proposition, we will," McFadden said. "This one is more focused on how you as a business or federal agency can be prepared with the help of an Avaya business partner also."

ICP, a Staten Island, N.Y.-based solution provider, set up a booth and hoped to attract customers with its VoIP solution as part of business-continuity plans, said Robert DeCarlo, vice president of enterprise communications systems sales at ICP.

"As long as you can put an address in a box, you can get data and voice. It allows customers much more flexibility. New technology lets you access information remotely if you can't get into a building."

Avaya has architected its products to handle emergency situations in which networks must be rerouted quickly, said Michael Porter, senior manager of government solutions marketing at Avaya.

"Businesses don't have one of anything. They don't have one network, one server. That's where we are with architecture. If your systems run as one large system, if you lose the heartbeat, you won't lose communications at a remote connections because of remote survivable processing," Porter said. "If you lose something, other systems can take over. If you lose a central location, it could be the LAN, electricity, the building itself. You can reroute calls that normally go to that system to go somewhere else. If someone is remotely connected, their phone can go looking for another gateway. Your backup location receives calls."