Business Continuation Initiatives Are Top Of Mind

Last week, we attended the Wainhouse Research Collaboration Futures Summit ‘09 in Boston (Cambridge, actually.)  The whole event as worth it in every way.  We enjoyed ourselves—always a good thing—but more than that, we learned a great deal and we made some good strong business connections with potential partners.

We also heard a wake-up call.During one of the impromptu discussions that take place between the more formal presentations a comment was made that gave us pause to think.  Apparently, some of the video conferencing strategies consultants in attendance have been fielding an increase in the number of requests for help from enterprises that are in a sudden hurry to get new or expanded video conferencing capabilities into place.  When asked why the rush, these enterprises reply is H1N1, the swine flu virus.

It seems that more than a few enterprise managers believe that come this fall, H1N1, or the fear of H1N1, is going to all but eliminate their business travel but that’s not even the half of it: these managers believe that their employees will be staying home from the office in droves; invoking the right (or privilege) to telecommute instead.

Think about this for a moment.  If the co-worker in the cubicle next to you is barking and sneezing, are you going to wait around to find out if it’s just a bit of a cold?  Not likely, we think.  And if you tell your boss you’re going to work from home for the next week or two, can your boss reasonably ask you to risk your health while someone figures out whether they can run an MPLS link to your house?

These enterprise managers are looking at the impact of H1N1 as a business continuation issue and it’s the perfect time to do it.  Better to be prepared to continue to do business than to be scrambling to recover from a disaster.

Needless to say, we see our product, IPQ, from IPeak Networks, as a part of a complete business continuation plan and especially when time is tight.  When the enterprise needs keep off-premises workers productive but those workers are beyond the reach of the enterprise network, IPQ can make the difference.  IPQ elevates an ordinary public Internet connection to a significantly higher level of quality and performance.  That means that those droves of telecommuters and their managers can expect the network applications they use every day and video conferencing in particular to perform just as well at home as at the office.  So, IPQ can actually play a role in minimizing the impacts of a very real health threat and we are working hard to get the word out.

And now, a few words about irony.  Yes, we took a plane to Boston and stayed in a hotel in Cambridge and yes that means we engaged in some good old business travel.  Could we have partaken from a distance?  Could we have stayed home and still learned?  Yes.  In fact, Wainhouse Research did offer an online stream from the conference (delivered by ON24, expertly.)  But could we have made those new business connections?  Of that, I am not so sure.  I don’t know if technology will ever completely replace the experience of being there in person.  There is no doubt that HD and telepresence systems and the so-called immersive experience are closing the gap and making some kinds of business travel completely unnecessary, but these things will never be able to buy me a beer.

Cheers!