23 November 2012 21:42:00 AEDT 2 MIN READ

Warrnambool fire: why businesses in South West Victoria need email continuity in place

 

A fire at the Warrnambool telephone exchange has left thousands of businesses in South West Victoria without mobile, internet or landline services.

Telstra and Optus have confirmed that it could take several days before any of these services are restored. For more information on the fire and the region affected Annika Smethurst and Andy Burns are covering it in The Herald Sun.

Also, images of the damage are available on 3AW.

The cost of outages

Outages are never good but a number of businesses are frustrated about the timing of this one with the busy Christmas period approaching.

"It's a total inconvenience with Christmas coming," photographer Gary Francis told the Herald Sun.

"Retail isn't in the best state at the moment, and we really need to capitalise on the Christmas shopping period.

"If it's not up by the weekend it'll be really tough."

Why email continuity is a vital tool for businesses during downtime

One way businesses can minimise the impact of internet and online communications outages is to implement a continuity service. It's a necessary safeguard to ensure email still gets delivered.

How are businesses with email continuity better off?

If your primary mail server is down due to an incident like the Warrnambool fire, your email is automatically delivered to a fall-over server in a different location (the cloud).

Instead of emails bouncing, 100% of your emails get delivered meaning you don't miss important messages.

If you need to access and send emails, that can be done by heading to an area that isn't experiencing the outage. Then through your web browser you can access an emergency inbox which has all the capabilities of your regular email client.

What's more, with continuity implemented, you get access to two weeks worth of email.

Once the outage is over, all the messages are resent to the primary mail server.

If you run a business that relies on email for its sales, marketing, customer service, support or any other business process, having continuity in place is an absolute no-brainer.

(Image credit: GeoWombats)

Further reading on email continuity

- Lessons about backing up and disaster recovery from Hurricane Sandy

- The promise of uninterrupted email around the clock

- How email continuity helps you survive downtime

- MailGuard Live email continuity