CSO: What the Gulf Oil Spill can teach CIOs about disasters

While I’m by no means trying to take attention away from the horrific environmental and economic disaster that the now largest oil spill in U.S. history has caused, I can’t help but see some lessons that I and other IT professionals can learn from it.

The massive amount of crude heading to the Gulf Coast is currently being met by an army of ships, clean-up vehicles and tens of thousands of people who are collecting and cleaning hundreds of miles of beaches. A unified command structure that is coordinating efforts of local, state and federal agencies alongside commercial assets is now in place, sifting and transmitting tons of vital information in near real time, to deploy resources where they can be most effective.

Most of this, of course, is occurring away from comfortable offices with stable infrastructure. Data is being transferred to and from remote operations via multiple channels, including landline, wireless and satellite technology. The connectivity issues alone are mind boggling.

More of the CSO article from Max Huang

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.