The power outages experienced in the US and Canada on 14th/15th August have left many businesses without IT systems. However, this downtime could have been avoided if businesses had backed up their platforms at sites across the world, says Interxion, Europe's largest provider of data centres and managed services.
Interxion is also advising firms to consider using oil-based generators as a back up source of power.
"When IT systems go down due to power outages, people tend to think it's just one of those things, but it's not - it is completely possible to keep e-commerce and IT systems running if businesses have the right level of resilience," said Anthony Foy, group managing director, Interxion. "Mirroring IT systems in different countries - even different continents - and making sure primary power supplies are backed up with generators means a company's e-presence can carry on uninterrupted even in the most testing of circumstances." Interxion manages data centres in eleven European countries, enabling its customers to back up their critical IT infrastructure at numerous sites across a wide geographical area. Through its strategic partnership with Equinix, which has data centres across North America and AsiaPac, Interxion is also able to offer customers access to business continuity sites on a truly global scale. Interxion's premises are also equipped with oil generators which will keep systems continually powered up.
"The North American blackout has sorted the wheat from the chaff in terms of operational resilience. Whilst financial services firms - already conscious of legislation governing resilience and the impact downtime has on their customers - have shown they take resilience very seriously, many other firms have seen their operations severely disrupted," continued Foy. "It's these firms which need to review their business continuity procedures, otherwise they will start losing customers." Online MEDIAtlas, which provides a web-based database of worldwide media contacts, has admitted its service went down due to the power cuts in the US. During three hours of downtime, Online MEDIAtlas's customers were unable to access its database.
Interxion is available for comment regarding this matter.