As Hurricane Katrina cuts a wide swath of destructionthrough parts of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, many businesses have been forced to activate emergency backup plans due to flooding, power outages, and other adverse conditions. Not surprisingly, SunGard Data Systems Inc. has seen a sharp increase in the demand for its availability services as businesses affected by the storm cut over to the company's various backup and recovery sites.
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The intensity of the storm also is likely to keep clients at SunGard or other backup facilities longer than most emergencies, says Bob DiLossi, manager of SunGard Availability Services' crisis management center in Philadelphia. Some companies are talking about staying for two or three weeks, more than double the average time that companies generally operate remotely during an emergency. In addition to servers and other data-center infrastructure equipment, SunGard clients are calling for workspace for their employees who need connectivity to the Web and to telephone lines ...

Thoughts are with those whose lives have been affected. SunGard sounds like it is doing it's part to help with the business end of things.

Steve Shu