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August 26, 2011 at 12:00 PM

With Hurricane Irene bearing down and threatening the East Coast, although Evocative is on the opposite end of the United States (West Coast, San Francisco Bay Area), I'd feel remiss if I didn't say something about how we view preparedness.

I feel very much like I'm in the preparedness business in every aspect of my life, because not only am I CEO/CTO of this colocation and managed services company, for which disaster readiness and recovery is a mantra, but I'm also an EMT volunteer and radio operator for a local fire department, and Red Cross Disaster Action Team (DAT) Chair for Contra Costa County. That's in my free time, of course.

It should then be no surprise that my family and I have home and car kits. Every car has a medical kit and some basic survival supplies. My garage houses a larger medical kit, to handle not just my family but a good chunk of my neighborhood as well. We have food, camping and comfort supplies, radios (including amateur "ham" radios), tons of batteries, and of course, a generous supply of stored water in various forms. It's the accumulation of years of preparation and learning, research and reading, and just seeing what other people stash in their kits and thinking "wow, that's pretty clever." We have an evacuation plan, organized meeting places, and people to contact that can coordinate communication for us if we can't reach each other directly.

I spend a good portion of my life here at work, in the data center. And is the data center prepared like my home? You're darned right. There's more to securing and preparing our data center environment than ensuring that the plant is physically prepared--generator tanks filled and refueling contracts in place, equipment always kept in a state of readiness, etc. A data center needs to be prepared to deal with the needs of staff and customers as well, because not only is there a high likelihood that someone will be there when a major disaster strikes, but there's a good chance they'll be staying a while.

Evocative's EAP, or Emergency Action Plan, defines our preparedness and responses. It includes instructions and specifications for the maintenance of a large kit of supplies. Our medical kits are designed to treat the kind of injuries and trauma we would expect to see in the most likely disaster here in the San Francisco Bay Area: an earthquake. We're ready for blunt trauma and cuts from broken glass, panic and cardiac emergencies induced by the events, and even diabetic emergencies from lack of access to insulin. The kit is broad enough in scope and large enough to include supplies to treat a much larger number of people than just our staff and customers--we're ready for a lot of people in our building, because we're likely to not be the only ones here, and of all the environments in the building, ours is the one that's designed to be up and running post-disaster. We take the view that we may be a "go-to" resource for other tenants of the building for a short time. Our caches also include water, food, cots, and the all-important toilet supplies (a perhaps unpleasant detail that must not be forgotten). Other members of the staff have also been trained in disaster response, and many of us are also members of the city's CERT group.

I don't know of any other data center anywhere that's as prepared as we are. To be honest, I've never asked any of my peers in the industry how they address the non-technical aspects of a post-disaster management of their businesses. A lot of Operations Managers I know get bogged down in the details of facility operations and forget the very human aspects on which the operations really run. But I know that Evocative is ready, and just like my ever-growing home and car kits, we constantly think of ways to be more ready. For many facilities on the East Coast, they may just be addressing some of these needs now. That is nothing but good for their business, and good for their customers and staff, and I hope they keep it up.

To my customers that read this, I hope it gives you some comfort to know that we're prepared on a deeper level than may be immediately obvious. But more importantly, follow our lead and prepare yourselves and your offices in a similar way. It's a small investment that you will no doubt be glad that you made when you need it.

And to all of Evocative's peers on the East Coast, good luck over the coming days. We'll be watching and learning from you, and rooting for your safety above all. Hopefully this is another event where you look back and think, "because we were prepared, nothing happened." But being prepared is, as I said, nothing but good for everyone concerned, because the more prepared you are, the more opportunities you will get to control the outcome.