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The blackout that afflicted about 50 million North American customers this month produced one unusual statistic--fewer than 100 organizations invoked access to "hot sites" offering back-up computing and communications for use in emergencies.
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"What that shows is how much organizations are making their own arrangements to prepare for such emergencies in-house," said Tim de Lisle, managing principal of Corigelan, a Chicago consultancy composed of former senior executives from Comdisco, the company that pioneered use of hot sites.

"Hot sites made a lot of sense in the era of the mainframe computer," said de Lisle. "But with distributed computing, they're less necessary."

Most companies have developed their own emergency plans that include backup power supplies when commercial electricity becomes unavailable and computer backups when networks experience trouble, he said.

It's a good thing that so few organizations sought to use hot sites during the recent electrical grid failure, de Lisle said, because had thousands sought to use those facilities, many would have been disappointed.

"These are shared facilities, and there are usually no guarantees," he said. "The hot sites are sold and sold again. If you have a widespread disaster, you'll have many organizations contending for the same limited facilities."

While shared hot sites can be a good solution for some businesses, many will find it is cheaper and smarter to plan to do their own recovery planning, he said.

Copyright © 2003. Chicago Tribune.