Computers in Business :: Ireland's Leading Business IT Magazine

There’s a chance swine flu will turn out to be another ‘Millennium Bug’ – lots of hype about how it will affect business, followed by lots of precautionary investment in technology, followed by the stark reality: minimal impact.

But swine flu is different to the Millennium Bug. It is not a computer glitch. Rather, it is a real virus that has, so far, killed 1,800 people worldwide – including two people in Ireland. It a sufficiently large threat to be branded a pandemic by the World Health Organisation.

At this time of year, as thousands of people head back to work, school and college after the summer break, the infection rate is likely to see a sharp upturn. Most organisations are likely to lose at least some staff to the virus and if there is a major outbreak, the numbers could be a lot higher.

The government report, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) – Responding to an Influenza Pandemic, published in 2007 and updated in June this year, advised the average business to plan for the “scenario under which 40 per cent of its employees are absent during peaks of infection’‘.

This is a worrying prospect for any business and, while it may never come to pass, any business that decides to turn a blind eye to the danger is taking a big risk. As may be expected, many large companies already have business continuity plans in place to ensure they stay operational in the case of a swine flu outbreak – or any other emergency (see panel).With smaller businesses it’s a different story.

Smaller budgets and fewer resources mean that contingency planning is probably not a priority for most of them. But there are signs that SMEs, too, are waking up to the threat.

“We are noticing that employers are ringing us a lot more, looking for guidance in relation to how they put a business contingency plan in place, what areas should they be looking at and what possible issues may arise should swine f lu reach the levels that are currently forecast,” said Avine McNally, assistant director of the Small Firms’ Association (SFA).

While many small businesses may feel they have more pressing problems than swine flu to deal with, it is imperative they begin putting some contingency plans in place, according to McNally.” You can’t take a wait-and-see approach because if swine flu hits and everyone is looking for something at the same time, the supplies and services may not be there.”

Contingency planning has little to do with IT directly. Much of it is to do with preparing policies on sick leave and travel, consulting with suppliers and customers to agree a coordinated response, putting hygiene systems in place and formulating an emergency communication plan.

But, naturally, IT underpins many of the elements of the BCP and, of the advice SFA is giving out to its members, ICT constitutes an important part.

“We are telling them that they may need to look at some areas of ICT. These would include giving people remote access, allowing them to telework for a period of time in order to reduce the spread of infection, and cutting down on business travel by using conference-calling or video-conferencing technologies,” said McNally.

Of course, many organisations already have a remote working system in place for at least some of their employees. For these firms, the priority should be to stress-test their systems, said Philip Fitzpatrick, information worker specialist at Microsoft Ireland.

“Companies have already mobile-enabled a proportion of their workforce, and I don’t think they’ll rush out and enable a further 50 per cent of their workforce.

“I think the question that needs to be asked is how robust, secure and scalable is that current infrastructure to allow more people to go on it? So if 5 per cent of my workforce is using that infrastructure today, could I add another 5 per cent or 10 per cent?”

The infrastructure should also be flexible enough to support repeated waves of teleworking. “Swine flu could take a while to flow through so I think organisations should be gearing themselves up to be doing this on an ongoing basis, and looking at how resilient and robust their infrastructure is. As they move data out to mobile devices they need to make sure they have the right security in place, too,” said Fitzpatrick.

Frazer Furlong, sales manager for IT infrastructure at reseller and services firm Ergo, advised companies to undertake a remote-working readiness assessment to ensure its infrastructure could scale and assess the requirements in terms of bandwidth, hardware and remote-access technologies. Putting VPN access in place could be expensive, said Furlong, who advised businesses to choose browser-based VPNs that could be accessed via any laptop, rather than a VPN solution that required a licensed client to be installed on each machine.

“Organisations have no idea to what extent they will need to ramp this up, so the unlimited-licensing VPN gives them the option to pay once and, if they need to push it out to 90 per cent or 100 per cent of their employees, then they can do that,” he said.

Jason Boyle, professional services manager at Cork based IT services firm PFH, said that there were two specific scenarios a company should plan for from an IT perspective. One is that its IT department is completely knocked out by swine f lu. Here, backup re source will need to be put in place internal ly or externally. (A number of IT firms can provide helpdesk and other technical services on an outsourced basis. The client firm simply buys a block of hours or days in advance for use in a time of need.)

The other is that it needs certain critical groups of employees – such as the accounts department – to work from home to protect them from infection. In this situation, the priority is to ensure that they will be able to access the applications they use day-to-day, such as the accounts system and credit control.

“The key for everyone these days is billing and collecting debts and how to keep that part of the business running,” said Boyle.” The question you will need to ask is, can I still access my accounts department or other critical areas within the company if there’s a’ don’t enter’ sign hung outside the front of the building?”

Boyle said it was relatively easy and inexpensive for smaller businesses to put together a contingency plan and make selective preparations.” If you are a smaller company you might decide to buy a couple of laptops and some 3G cards and leave them sitting in the office, plus a small Citrix server, which gives you secure remote access. If someone does need to work from home, they simply take pool laptop with a 3G card.”

He also advocated the use of technologies such as Skype and Microsoft Office Communications Server, which integrates with Outlook and allows for remote video conferencing on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis, which would reduce the need for travel.

His key message was that technology is not expensive.” Your big investment is hardware and software – and right now hardware is so cheap, you’d almost get it free with your cornflakes!”

But will SMEs make those purchases, no matter how cheap? Undoubtedly some businesses will compare swine flu to theY2K bug and defer any investment until they establish the severity of the situation.

The problem with this approach is that, if swine flu does turn out to be serious, it may be too late for them to act. It would also be a mistake to assume, said Furlong, that their investment in technology would be wasted if swine flu did not wreak havoc.

“What a lot of people forget with regard toY2K is that, when they came out of that, they were left with an IT environment that, in many cases, held good for four years. So it wasn’t wasted money; it was an investment that lasted.

Likewise, organisations that invest today are going to be in a much better position to facilitate teleworking than they were before.”