On April 16, a violent storm system ravaged 20 North Carolina counties, destroying homes, knocking over power lines, and causing North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue to declare a state of emergency in several areas. While it pales in comparison to the loss of life and property suffered by some families, many businesses suffered severe setbacks and a severe loss of productivity due to technical issues created by the storm.
Power outages were one of the more significant effects from the onslaught of tornadoes. Electricity was lost in the city of Raleigh, home to the North Carolina state capitol as well as many major banks and firms. As servers and data centers shut down, many businesses saw their operations slow to a halt.
One Raleigh-based marketing firm, Three Ships Media, was able to overcome these potentially crippling effects with the power of cloud computing. While their office was spared from damage, their electricity was disabled with no timeline for when it might be restored. With more questions than answers, founder and CEO Zach Clayton was stretched to formulate a plan to continue work under the conditions.
After some time, a solution was reached; the entire company would temporarily relocate to a nearby university library to work remotely. Armed with cell phones and laptops, employees marched into the library amidst college students and professors to continue business as usual. Since the company uses the Google Apps cloud for the much of their content production and file-sharing, little besides hardware was needed from the office. Employees downloaded work and documents and were able to maintain a typical operating day in an entirely foreign environment.
Electricity was restored that afternoon, and the team moved back into their home office, yet clients would have never known they were gone. Work had continued in the morning from a remote location without a hitch. As Monty Cook, Vice President of Audience Development, noted, “If we had been bound by a traditional server setup we would not have been nearly as effective, efficient and responsive to client needs. Our agility and nimbleness was on display, in part, because of cloud computing solutions like Google Docs, Central Desktop and Salesforce.com … plus a good wireless connection”.
Through the agility and flexibility of cloud computing, Three Ships Media was able to rapidly adjust their work environment and plans, communicate this change with their employees, and meet at a remote location to continue work without suffering any downtime or loss in productivity.
While we are proud to share a success story of how cloud computing helped a business overcome a difficult situation, our thoughts and prayers are with those who experienced loss and are still suffering.
