In Texas, powerful storms and severe weather are a way of life. Whether it be tornadoes, hail the size of baseballs, gulf-coast hurricanes, inland flooding, or just your run-of-the-mill severe thunderstorm, battling severe weather is part and parcel to life in the Lone Star State. And just this last weekend, a monster thunderstorm wrought untold damage across the metroplex, and left hundreds of thousands without power. Beyond the physical and emotional damage to folks’ homes and cars, though, the last thing you want to think about when navigating all that is your business not being able to do business after you dig yourself out. That’s where we come in.

Losing power doesn’t mean losing data

Severe weather is just one of a host of reasons a company might lose power; and the threat to business continuity is no joke — it can equate to noticeable losses through foregone worker productivity, inability to fulfill orders, you name it. But, using a managed IT service provider like Leverage can help you mitigate those losses, or avoid them altogether. Here’s how:

Response timeline for severe weather

• The storm tore through the metroplex on Sunday, which presents its own problems as many businesses aren’t on site to monitor system up-time. Because of our installed monitoring system with our clients, we were alerted to the power failures as soon as they happened.
• Leverage installs battery backup systems on client sites for a host of reasons, one of which is this exact scenario — unpredictable power outages. These battery backup systems allowed for a graceful shutdown of critical components with minimal to no data loss or system damage.
• When power was restored for our more fortunate clients, our power management systems automatically trigger a restart so power comes back on as soon as that power is restored to the client’s business.
• For those of our clients not as fortunate with a speedy restoration of power, our monitoring system showed us all systems that were still down on Sunday evening. From there, we could schedule with our affected clients to arrive on-site early Monday to avoid business interruption.
• Finally, our data forensic protocol meant we could both audit and confirm the health of all client data in case of a larger disruption, or escalate and execute a data restoration from backup as required.

Losing power is not the end of the world — there are far worse things a business and its employees can endure than that. However, the last thing you want to worry about in a trying time is whether or not your company and its data is safe. Or how you’re going to get everything up and running again once power is restored.

While we hate to see severe weather events like this, it does go to show how valuable to both your peace of mind — and your bottom line — a managed IT service provider like Leverage can be.

Contact Leverage Technologies today to learn more about how we can help your business be better prepared to handle severe weather.