Ships Systems: Surviving the Storm, and the Recovery - ' What About Next Time'

Next Time

Now that she's had to lead the evacuation of her IT staff and her data center twice in as many years, and had to rebuild it once, what would Rideout do differently?

"There's no doubt that having a hot site where we could just flip the switch would have been beneficial in this situation," she said. Until Katrina, it was difficult to make a case for such a hot site, but now Rideout thinks that will be revisited.

"Having some kind of communication devices more readily available" is next on Rideout's list. "Maybe satellite phones."

And Rideout said she thinks that the human aspect needs more thought and better planning.

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One of Rideout's employees died during the disaster, and a quarter of the employees remain homeless. "When you think of all they've done in the face of such personal loss it is an amazing thing," she said, recounting the terrible price some of her staff paid. "We need to make sure we take care of these people."

"We have over 50 people in Dallas to bring back the servers and operations," Rideout said, thinking of her staff. "Some of those people have homes that were wiped out here. It's an amazing human story."

And taking care of her people is tops on Rideout's agenda.

She will not require her employees to relocate when their hearts and families are still in Mississippi. "No one will lose their jobs because of this. But there are people who would like to move to Dallas, and we will make that option available," she said.

Either way, she will accommodate the needs and desires of her staff. "They won't need to relocate. It's a nice thing about technology and virtualness," she said.