It is not surprising that we have had a number of enquiries from existing clients and prospects about Coronavirus, and how to prepare their systems for the various scenarios laid out by the UK Government yesterday.
It is first worth pointing out that we have been here before: the systems I built for Majedie, back in 2003, were at least in part designed with SARS in mind. It always struck me as odd that the Financial Regulator, even after the risks of human colocation were so amply demonstrated in that alarm, continued to insist on an "Alternate Location" as the lynchpin of any Disaster Recovery plan, something as useful as a trap door in a canoe in the event of a pandemic. Cloud software, in contrast, means an alternate location anywhere, or no location at all, depending on the risk. My suspicion is that they (and all the IT bods in the regulated businesses) were so focused on the mitigatable information security risks of the cloud that they ignored the fact that this left their businesses open to the catastrophic risk that they would not be able to operate at all.
The squawking noise we all hear is the sound of lots of chickens coming home to roost, as businesses scramble to get to where they should have been over a decade ago. Which brings us back to COVID-19: how do businesses prepare, how do they become scatter-proof? The answer, as with most things, is a mixture of technology and culture.
Many businesses will retort that they have been working hard at this for ages. Email is now available on phones, and VPNs deployed to tunnel into the Network to allow people access to their files. However, such piecemeal efforts are really designed to accommodate the odd straggler away from the office, not the entire team scattered to the four winds. The Network itself is vulnerable if no-one is physically inside it. What happens if the VPN gateway fails? How can clients phone the business if the telephones are behind the firewall, sitting proudly on empty desks?
Furthermore, such a Network was only ever there to support the real network, the physical interaction between colocated employees who printed stuff off, perched on desks to refine ideas and met to discuss progress. Left on its own, the Network is like a frame of steel girders, all structure but no colour or context. Faced with an absence of physical contact, employees struggle, even if the VPN is up (let's hope). A quick corporate credit card raid to buy a Zoom subscription isn't really going to help, as the means of communication is separate from the content. What happens when a fifth of your workforce is off sick? What was employee A doing when they were last working - are there any deliverables to finish? How do I find out the latest sales figures now that Maureen in Sales is no longer available on email to ask?
As we have said many times before, the answer lies in treating information as separate from the things it's manifested in - documents, departments, processes. Thus a sales report is defined by what it is, not who produces it. So what? The information is there, searchable, available and in context, to whoever needs it (and is accredited) regardless of where they are, or how they are organised. This latest Virus issue will pass, but we should not forget again what it is telling us about our technology.
Which brings us on to the culture. For those businesses whose management have a Dickensian, untrusting outlook on their employees, this crisis is profoundly scary. They have no choice but to leave their employees to it, and if they have had no historical respect for their staff, you can bet the staff have similar levels of respect in return. No wonder Netflix shares are doing well.