I recently finished Nathaniel Philbrick’s book, In the Heart of the Sea. It recounts the sinking of the whale ship, Essex. This tale is widely known as the basis of the novel, Moby Dick. More than that it is the story of men cast at sea with minimal food and water, who resorted to cannibalism to survive. Pritchard tells of their plight dramatically and without sensationalism. I finished the book contemplating that the folly that defined this tragedy was a folly similar to one that causes the decline of many small businesses. These fishermen entered unknown waters with little information and no plan for contingencies. No one could have foreseen a whale ramming their boat. But boats do sink; and the captain of the Essex should have had a plan for survival.
When it comes to technology and computers, how many small businesses forge into new technologies with out a plan for a roll-back or without adequate preparation or training? I recently received a call from a business to restore their database. Their server had lost its mirrored drives. The machine was several years old; and the application it ran was even older – dos based. Not only had the hard drives failed, the tape drive also failed; and the owner could not find his original backup software disks. His version was several generations old and no longer on the market.
The owner had known he needed to upgrade; but everything worked; and he was having a hard time choosing a new application. He felt secure that he had mirrored drives and a tape backup system. However, he did not have a routine in place for checking the health of his system. Disaster struck; he lost several days data entry. And he had to find a new business solution immediately. Instead of a planned investment with a comfortable roll-out; he found himself hurriedly installing new hardware and software He was transitioning without adequate preparation or training. His business suffered and so did his customers.
What could this business owner have done differently?
· He could have monitored his systems better and recognized their lifespan.
· He could have kept better track of his original software media
· Knowing the potential lifespan, he could have budgeted for his system upgrade.
· He could have put more effort into his search for replacement systems.
· He could have set a timeline for completing the upgrade.
· He could have put together a budget that allowed for training and testing.
What should this business owner be doing now?
· He should establish routines for monitoring his equipment and patching his operating systems and application software.
· He should periodically test his backup systems.
· He should catalog and store the media (disks and cdroms) that will let him rebuild his systems from scratch.
· He should document his systems.
· He should utilize an online storage provider to backup his most critical data.
