Petrochemical giant BP has put in place a multi-level
communications strategy which includes using Skype, to keep in
touch with staff in the event of a major disaster.
Following the hurricanes that damaged its oil facilities in
Texas city, the Tsunami and concerns over avian flu, BP established
a disaster plan that combines consumer-based technology, public and
mobile telephone systems, the internet and satellite to ensure
staff can be found and re-establish communications across the BP
supply chain.
Speaking at the Burton Group conference in Barcelona, Ted Davis,
group telecom director at BP said, "In the hurricane we lost
telephony but the internet was okay," so staff were able to use BP
e-mail and applications. As a result, the company is deploying a
road warrior kit comprising Skype and eFax faxing software and has
doubled the capacity of its virtual private network (VPN) to
provide remote access.
Davis said. "We like Skype because it does not rely on
infrastructure." Three hundred satellite phones based on the low
Earth orbit Iridium service are also being used within BP's global
crisis centres.
BP has also moved from a hub and spoke wide area network model
to two global providers of MPLS network services. Across 60 sites,
users connect to the corporate network via the internet, which
Davis said improves resilience as the end user would be able to
connect via any available ISP.
To maintain communications in the event of the data centre being
taken out, Davis said end users provide an alternate,
non-corporate, e-mail account such as Yahoo! Mail, which is stored
within the company's Outlook Global address book.
Staff have been issued with a telephone callcard to enable them
to call in if they are safe or to request help. They can also
register via a public website. This service is operated both by
telecom provider Dialogic and BP in order to double up on
resilience.
The address book is downloaded locally onto end-users' laptops,
to ensure it can be accessed, even when an online connection is
unavailable.