I live in San Diego, and last week, there were fires here. Boy, were there fires here.

My family didn’t have to evacuate, like we did during the fires three years ago. So aside from the smoky air and having the kids indoors all week, it was mostly business as usual. We were very fortunate.

Naturally, I had my backups ready to go. Everything was saved on two flash drives. Then, something strange happened.

I started getting phone calls from clients. Their emails to me were bouncing! My ISP’s email server had gone down.

I immediately switched to a Hotmail account I’d created just in case something like this came to pass. I sent messages to all my clients from the account, so they would know what was going on. It got me thinking: we all know we should back up our data, but what about our systems?

I was prepared, because I had a Hotmail account ready to go. My alternate address isn’t anything cool, revealing, or personal. It sounds professional, and I use it only for business. The account is also a paid account, so it can handle larger files.

I also have a dial-up internet account, so I’ll be operational even if my primary ISP shuts down. I can serve my clients from any computer, anywhere, no matter the status of my ISP, primary email server, or web host.

These days, email is an essential form of business communication, but all kinds of events, both local and distant, can cause outages.

As a professional, are you prepared?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 4:39 pm and is filed under RESOURCES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.