It’s not just the resiliency of the citizens of New Orleans that has earned the right to be celebrated this hurricane season. Businesses should also be celebrated for their resiliency. I recently spoke with executives from Cooperative Processing Resources (CPR) and LifeShare Blood Centers about the ways they avoided severe downtime during Hurricane Katrina, and bounced back as even more resilient organizations. Kate Campion, president of CPR, based in Dallas, Texas, had offices scattered throughout the New Orleans area. CPR had one office that was impacted directly by Hurricane Katrina; it was underwater and unable to reopen for a few months. Working with Sungard Availability Services, it was able to store, retrieve and recover all company data. Data accessibility was not impacted, and it experienced no downtime due to the storm.
Ric Jones, CIO of LifeShare Blood Centers, is based in Shreveport, Louisiana. During Hurricane Katrina, LifeShare Blood Centers was forced to shut down a number of regional centers in Louisiana. At the same time, blood demand increased substantially while donors were unable to give blood as facilities were closed. Jones says: “It is actually only after we experienced downtime during Hurricane Katrina that we decided it was time to find a solution for our critical IT infrastructure – we found that solution through a small Oklahoma City-based vendor. But years later, data backlogs began to occur, and we realized we needed a better and more reliable solution. We now work with Sungard AS to protect critical applications and to ensure data is constantly backed up and protected.”