- Sobering Statistics
- Cytel Survival
- The Advantages of Collocation
- Summary
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Cytel Survival
Cytel started out in the long distance business about 20 years ago, becoming a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) and later a disaster recovery provider. Cytel maintains a collocation facility at 2 Shell Plaza in Houston, right in the downtown area. The facility employs backup power, generators, and batteries. (Telecommunications equipment generally runs on -48 volt power, which many people forget until it's too late.)
Two power grids in Houston survived Hurricane Ike. One was the grid that served the downtown Medical Center area. The other served the Cytel collocation facility. Cytel attributes this survival largely to blind luck, but we think that a few more things may have been involved. Since both grids were in downtown areas, chances are that the distribution facilities would have been buried, which would have helped prevent destruction from hurricane-force winds. Flooding certainly can disrupt buried facilities, as illustrated during the Gustav and Katrina hurricanes in New Orleans, but storm drains and other infrastructure for carrying away floodwater can be expected to be rather effective in a major downtown area. The issues of aerial cable and relative lack of storm drainage are more pronounced in the suburbs and outlying areas than downtown areas—and, other than downtown, most of Houston was in the dark. (Not having been down there, we can't substantiate this theory personally, but it seems plausible.)
Another common problem occurred, even for our case study. Cytel employees went home at first, but came in promptly after determining that home and family were okay. Your recovery plan must take into account that after any widespread disaster, employees may not be available immediately. Other than downed trees and power lines, along with some roof damage, the storm damage from Ike wasn't bad enough to preclude Cytel employees from returning to the facility. The situation could have been different if injuries (or worse, fatalities) or extensive damage had occurred. Your plan must take these possibilities into account as well.
After returning to the facility, Cytel employees had all customers back online immediately and began working in the "spirit of service" mode that fortunately captures responders under adverse circumstances. For example, only 12 hours after the storm, they restored a large exchange server for a major company, in order to give that company email access. While this firm didn't have phone service at its normal location (due to lack of power), having email at least allowed for coordinating recovery efforts. Without the restoration of the email exchange server, this wouldn't have been possible.