Now that the sun has come out again in Texas and the temperatures have risen to more comfortable heights, it’s hard to believe we were experiencing freezing temperatures, dangerous, life threatening conditions, and actual snow only last week. Luckily all Juern employees made it through the week and we are all happy to be safely back in the office!
“Snowvid” got us contemplating what we experienced as a business and how we, along with our amazing clients, coped with the crisis as well as what we all can take from the experience business-wise. Our disaster planning and remote access solutions saw us safely and productively through an entire week of the Texas Power Crisis and we hope our experiences can help your company better plan for the NEXT disaster.
So, What Did Juern Technology’s Week Look Like During “Snowmageddon 2021”?
Well, the entire office switched quickly to work-from-home mode. This lasted for the duration of the entire week as we utilized our secure remote access solution until conditions improved enough to be deemed safe for the commute. Then we significantly lowered the temperature of our office to conserve as much energy as possible. We also have a great system in place to easily facilitate secure communication and collaboration between teammates while we all work from home, allowing us to stay in touch.
Our clients also saw a shift in how work was conducted last week as many of them worked remotely as well. With so many employees working from home, we saw an increase in only one I.T. issue. Can you guess what that issue was?
The Biggest I.T. Issue Our Clients Experienced Was….
*a bit anti-climactically* Remote access login issues! With many businesses having their employees work from home while the danger passed, a lot of employees were having to remote in for the first time in a while and had forgotten how to gain remote access to their company’s network. 80% of all tickets submitted to us last week were requests from clients needing a guiding hand to remind them how to login remotely. Once they had successfully logged in again, they were up and running with no further issues!
What I.T. Issues Did Our Clients NOT Experience Last Week?
We did not have a single ticket requesting help with a downtime issue nor with a cybersecurity issue. With 80% of all tickets asking for help with remote access logins, the other 20% were tickets requesting help setting up printing capabilities from home. That means NONE of our clients experienced any disruption from network downtime OR cyber-attacks, even when switching very quickly from the office to working from home.
Why Didn’t Our Clients Experience Any Other More Disruptive Issues?
- We never lost power at the office. In case of a power outage, we have a generator that will ensure all our functionalities are continually up and running. Luckily, we didn’t experience any power outages and didn’t end up needing to use our backup generator – but we’re sure glad we have one.
- Our Help Desk kept up with support tickets at their normal, impressive speed and effectiveness. Our remote access solution can handle all of our employees remoting in at once, allowing our help desk to conquer ticket after ticket at the same speed they would at the office. This ensured our clients would not go without crucial help.
- We make sure all cybersecurity measures are put in place BEFORE a disaster can occur. We ensure each and every client has a robust cybersecurity solution and these protections kept our clients’ computer networks safe and secure, even while working remotely.
What Can We All Take Away From The 2021 Texas Power Crisis?
- Your company MUST have a simple business continuity plan in place. A business continuity plan outlines your company’s course of action in the occurrence of a disaster. This plan must account for ALL potential threat scenarios and ALL employees must be trained once the plan is tested and finalized. The business continuity plan we have in place allowed work to continue during the Texas Power Crisis without company-wide disruption, keeping productivity going, and allowing profitability to always progress.
- A redundant power supply is essential. Last week we saw a widespread power outage like Texas had never seen before. ALL businesses should have a backup power supply to ensure business can continue without interruption, working remotely can be achieved, and valuable data loss can be prevented.
- Back up your data remotely! If you are already backing your data up on a daily basis (like you should be) but you’re only using in-house backup systems that will get damaged in the next natural disaster or fire, and can easily be stolen, then we recommend backing all your data up to an off-site cloud-based location, and we offer this as a service to our clients.
- Work can be conducted safely, even during a natural disaster, with the proper planning. Our office was able to continue working through the events of last week thanks to the plans we have in place, allowing all team members to work from home without disrupting business.
How can we help?
The Texas snowstorm of 2021 was a trial for everyone here in Texas whether it was at home, at work, or a mixture of both and we’d like to extend this courtesy to you: FREE Disaster Readiness Network Assessment. As a potential client, we’ll help you assess your network’s disaster readiness and let you know how quickly you could be back up and running again if disaster strikes. If you’re a San Antonio or Austin area business with 25 computers or more, give us a call today at (210) 245-6900 or click this link: https://www.juerntech.com/15-minute-discovery-call/ to schedule a quick, 15-minute Discovery Call to see how we can help!
