The employees met at two pre-arranged sites, armed with cell phones from two different carriers in case one of the telecommunications networks crashed. They also had walkie-talkies.
Company executives declared an emergency and Glenmede's systems, which were backed up using SunGard Availability Services, were restored at Glenmede's offices in four cities. The Philadelphia employees made their way to a SunGard hot site in the city, where 30 workstations were being prepped, and Voutsakis arranged to have phone lines shifted to the hot site. That combined with the other offices gave it 80 workstations, about one-third the normal amount. By 10 a.m., clients were being contacted, and within an hour, the firm was up and running and making trades for clients.
Voutsakis says that events like Y2K and 9/11 woke the firm up to the need to build better business-continuity plans. Voutsakis says Glenmede thought about using its existing offices as backup, but "we didn't feel comfortable." Instead, the firm decided to outsource that task and use SunGard's hot site as the backup site and link to the other offices through it.
There's evidence that suggests outsourcing continuity services, rather than building their own internal-backup sites, can help firms with their total cost of ownership and return on investment. A 2003 study by research firm IDC found firms that outsource their business-continuity needs actually lower their revenue loss, improve the utilization of IT staff and reduce their expenditures.
The report by IDC Analyst David Tapper found firms that don't own their internal back-up structure:
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