Winter is Coming

Well, father did always promise…

Game of Thrones fan or not we can’t argue that the dark nights are closing in and with that comes the severe weather and subsequent challenges businesses face. Broken phone lines, power outages, fires, burst pipes and storms can become a real issue for organisations. In between the 80mph winds (thanks Desmond) and the ensuing storms, the ‘tech disaster’ season is well and truly upon us.

The total cost to the UK’s communities and businesses as a result of winter 2015/16 flooding is estimated to be at £5-5.8bn. – Information Age

Investing in a business continuity plan and implementing technologies that are disaster recovery-ready will protect your business in the event of a disaster, safeguarding your workforce efficiency, productivity and protecting your revenue. It also means you’re not caught out when disaster strikes.

The night is dark and full of terrors

In this blog I’ll be outlining why the winter months matter to your business, how an unforeseen disaster can cost your business money and how you can plan and prepare for this with solutions that are designed to keep your business running. 

Broken phone lines and power cuts as a result of some predictably bad British weather can push your company’s infrastructure to breaking point and cause mayhem on your corporate comms.

Thankfully businesses now have the tools at their disposal to lessen the negative impact that these disasters bring. Instances such as storms, fires and cyber-attacks (including Ransomware attacks) should be considered as a part of your business continuity plan.

Game of Phones

It’s vital that your company continues to operate at full capacity, because your customers and competitors likely will be. If your client base is located across the country or internationally and customers are calling without the knowledge that disaster has struck your organisation, your customer experience will be poor and your reputation could be in jeopardy. 

Communication between your workforce is key to serving your customers and keeping your business on top form. Your telephone system is an integral part of these communications; utilising a hosted telephony system such as Gamma Horizon means that you don’t rely on ISDN lines, cutting the risk of cable damage and subsequently losing the use of your phone system.

Solutions like Gamma Horizon offer a wide range of fixed line and mobile telephony capabilities. Users are able to configure how their phone system works just by logging on remotely. Gamma allows you to re-route your calls to a mobile or house telephone, important if the office is out of use. Gamma Horizon also allows users to specify the call out number that appears so the number shown to customers is actually your office number and not your home phone number for example.

For companies that don’t have a hosted telephone system, in an instance when you need to re-route calls you would need to contact your service provider to apply the divert. All lines will have differing levels of SLA, meaning calls to your business would come to a standstill. Even when you manage to divert your calls they will likely only divert all incoming calls to one single number, rather than having the flexibility of re-routing to multiple lines. This hosted telephony solution from Gamma is hosted in a secure data centre which has powerful generators to ensure a continued service.

You never know when truly bad weather will strike, and you’ll need to be prepared. That is why implementing disaster recover ready solutions are so important. 

Power is power

In the words of Cersei Lannister herself, power is power. In our world of course, this means a viable power supply into your offices that ensures a continuous working environment. A power cut can be detrimental to output; in the event of a power cut you’ll need your staff to be up and running as soon as possible and working effectively from a remote location. This is where cloud solutions, such as Office 365, really save the day.

Not today

There is only one god and his name is death, and there is only one thing we say to death: “Not today.”

Keeping disasters at bay isn’t possible, but planning for them is. That’s why we’re working with our customers to ensure that should the worst happen, they are in the best position to carry on with business as usual.

Mobile and remote working is now more accessible than ever, productivity doesn’t stop at the office doors. Cloud solutions such as Office 365 enable a workforce to operate to their optimum anywhere at any time. We’ve outlined 3 products that can combat threats and keep your business running:

Datto is a disaster recovery solution based in the cloud that backs up and stores your data and systems in a safe and secure environment. Should you lose access to your data, because of a flood, fire, Ransomware attack etc you can easily retrieve all of your data. Datto is accessible and configurable online, you don’t need to be at the office you just need to be able to log onto the portal.

Keep the calls into and out of your business up and running with this cloud solution that is flexible and scalable to suit your business. Your staff won’t need to rely on BT re-routing calls – you or they can set this up remotely.

As a cloud-based solution, employees can access Office 365 from anywhere anytime, removing the need to be tied to the office. They can access emails, their files and documents, the Microsoft Office suite, Teams and SharePoint. This means that their digital workstation can be used should they need to work from another location.
Do you have a business continuity plan? Join our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery webinar on December 13th to find out more about Datto.