Pandemic Planning Solutions In Technology

Pandemic Planning / Influenza Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

Enterprises have spent millions to provide business continuity in the face of unexpected disasters. Governments from around the world are delivering guidance to businesses on how to plan and respond to the upcoming influenza “flu” season particularly in light of the heighten concerns caused by H1N1 outbreaks.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that as many as 40% of the workforce might be unable to come into work at the peak of the pandemic due to the need for many healthy adults to stay home and care for an ill family member. The CDC also recommends that individuals and companies put measures in place should a workplace close down or a situation arises that requires working from home. The CDC further advises that persons in the workplace should stay home for seven days after getting the flu, or 24 hours after symptoms end, whichever is longer. Around the world, businesses are putting pandemic plans in place particularly during this winter’s flu season (2009 is the first year of new H1N1 strain of influenza discovery).1

Pandemic planning guidelines for business and government organisations:

  • Ensure that you have the information technology and infrastructure needed to support multiple workers who may be able to work from home (e.g. desktop virtualisation solution).

  • Be prepared to implement multiple measures to protect workers and ensure business continuity. A layered approach will likely work better than using just one measure (e.g. remote access VPN, virtual desktops, VoIP, collaboration software, etc).

  • Identify essential business functions, essential jobs or roles, and critical elements within your supply chains required to maintain business operations. (e.g. secondary site for office workers, when primary office must be closed)

  • Allow employees to stay home if they are ill, have to care for ill family members, or must watch their children if schools or childcare facilities close. (e.g. at-home worker solution)


For many critical business applications, virtualisation solutions have been implemented in order to keep data centre environments safe. However, some enterprises have overlooked one of the most vital elements of their business continuity plans – their employees. Some questions need to be asked...

  1. If their desktop, applications, and resources disappear, how can they work?

  2. Is purchasing, migrating, or even replicating every employee desktop to a laptop a realistic or even financially viable solution?

  3. Are there cost-effective desktop virtualisation solutions that can allow users to effectively work from home?


BII Vendor Partners - Business Continuity Pandemic Planning

F5 Networks

Hypertec (Data In Transit Encryption Solutions)

Lumension Security

MXI Security

RingCube

RSA