Thursday's power cut, which crippled London's transport
network and hit homes and businesses, has highlighted the need for
detailed contingency planning.Disaster recovery firms Sungard and
Schlumberger Sema both reported clients invoking emergency
procedures after the 35=minute power outage.
Jamie Snowdon, research director at analyst
firm IDC, said the incident showed the need for organisations to
have procedures to deal with both the immediate aftermath of an
incident and longer-term business continuity.
"With power, for example, it's important that
companies should ensure that their computers can be powered down
correctly at short notice," he said.
"There is also a bigger picture of what
companies should be doing with data management, such as regular
back-up and making sure that important data is easily
accessible."
Paul Trowbridge, a member of the Storage
Networking Industry Association's European Governing Committee,
said that the incident emphasised the need for good practice in IT
business continuity.
"Firms need to ensure that their secondary
datacentres are significantly far enough away not to be affected by
localised power outages," he said.
A spokesman for National Grid Transco said
that its IT systems helped limit the impact of the power cut.
"The IT systems that control the sub-station
equipment meant that we were able to isolate the fault and limit
the areas affected."
"The system also allowed us to restore power
within 35 minutes," he added.
National Grid Transco has invested £3.5bn on
the National Grid's transmission system, including new IT systems,
over the past 13 years.