In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison stalled over southeast Texas and dropped more than 35 inches of rain in the state over a span of a week. The city of Houston experienced unprecedented flooding all over the city, but especially hard hit were the major business and medical districts. In addition, virtually every major roadway was impassible due to high water.

Software company NetIQ fell victim to Allison’s flood waters when the bottom floor of the company’s office building was submerged and electrical equipment was destroyed. This left the building – and NetIQ – without power for a week. Though the company brought in generators that would power some office equipment such as phones, NetIQ was forced to limp along in a reduced capacity while still trying to support business operations. And with the widespread street flooding, employees couldn’t get to the office to do their jobs.

Having gone through such a bad time during Allison, NetIQ’s vice president of IT Dohsung Yum vowed to have a strong disaster recovery/business continuity plan in place for the next emergency. Hurricane Rita in 2005 – which barely brushed Houston – gave him a chance to practice the plan, but Hurricane Ike in 2008 proved to be the real test. On Sept. 13, Ike knocked out power to more than 2.6 million Houston area businesses and residences, including the building NetIQ occupies. This time, says Yum, his company was prepared.

Yum’s first decision after Allison’s flood waters receded was to get out of running his own data center. He looked for a suitable company to host and manage NetIQ’s production servers, and he found CyrusOne just a few miles down the road from his own building. CyrusOne offers managed hosting, colocation and managed IT services in its 81,000 square foot Houston data center. NetIQ moved all its production servers to the CyrusOne facility and now Yum doesn’t worry about keeping his data center up and running anymore.

Having covered the data center, Yum pulled together a disaster recovery/business continuity team to conduct a business impact analysis. This helped NetIQ understand the key functions and applications that are a high priority to preserve or restore quickly during a disaster. The team based its disaster recovery/business continuity plan on the likely risks to each of its locations. For instance, hurricanes are an annual threat to the Houston office, but certainly not a concern for the Seattle office. However, whether it’s from a hurricane or a snowstorm, it’s possible for any business facility – regardless of location – to lose power for an extended period of time. So the team came up with ways to cope with loss of power.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.