Dave Bailey

Here’s the scenario: a variant of bird flu that we don’t have protection from becomes transmissible between humans. Your job, Mr Phelps, IT manager for Gadgets R U Inc, is to keep the business up and running. In so doing, you may help prevent the outbreak from sparking a global economic meltdown that would perhaps have worse consequences in the longer term.

Keeping the network in working order will be essential. This will require some fairly standard stuff, such as redundant power supplies and redundant WAN links.

Now, Mr Phelps, I can tell from that raised eyebrow, that you’re not altogether convinced about the danger. Well, this is not another implausible disaster-movie scenario that we’re facing. Meteor strikes, supervolcanoes and megatsunamis make for great Hollywood blockbusters, but disasters like these are unlikely to happen before you and a long line of future generations have been and gone. A birdflu pandemic is very likely to happen within the next 10 years.

The threat is so serious that all senior IT managers should make a point of studying the government’s advice on the matter. The main official document is entitled UK Influenza Pandemic Contingency Plan, which gives a fairly detailed description of what the government is planning to do in the event of an outbreak. There are other useful sources of information, such as Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (Cidrap).

Cidrap’s Michael Osterholm recently warned, “A pandemic that disrupted industrial production and international transportation would acutely affect developed countries, because their economies depend on just-in-time supply shipments, their healthcare systems have almost no excess capacity, and about 80 percent of pharmaceutical products are produced offshore.”

Of course, once you’ve sorted out how to keep your internal network up and running, there’s the national communications network to worry about. Is BT taking the necessary steps to maintain a service? Well, as it turns out, it’s not actually BT we need to be rooting for. Just before Christmas, I got the chance to have a natter with some of EMC’s UK team. They reminded me that it is actually EMC Smarts technology that services BT’s network. Could it be that it is these people who hold the key for UK business continuity?

Of course, the terrifying fact is that all the above may be moot if a pandemic gets out of hand. There’s little point having a business survive if there are no customers left to do business with.

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