The last time the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano erupted in 1821, it lasted for three years. Peter Linas, UK Managing Director, Bullhorn Recruitment Software, looks at modern-day solutions to ‘Acts of God”

With flights grounded for a week and around 50,000 Britons stranded abroad, the Icelandic volcano no doubt set many a CEO’s pulse racing. Almost a month after the initial eruption, the ash cloud is showing no signs of abating. When the crisis originally occurred, an estimated £3 million a day was lost in working hours alone caused by cancelled flights to the UK. For some companies, this required dusting off their disaster recovery and business continuity strategies, frantically calling in temps and freelancers to cover for absent employees, or reducing business activity to core levels to enable work to be spread among those who were present.

However, a cloud of ash need not cast a shadow over a company’s ability to operate at its optimum, and those who have already adopted cloud-based client management systems were already seeing the silver lining.

The benefits of Software as a Service (SaaS) have never been more apparent than during the past month when organisations that have chosen cloud-based services (in which the application, such as the recruitment management system is hosted on the internet rather than in a datacenter or server) were able to continue with business as usual, despite an unusually dispersed workforce. Recruiters who were ‘stuck’ outside of the country simply had to have their phones diverted, find an internet connection and they could continue working on their typical business applications, using all the integrated resources, from LinkedIn to candidate and client lists, as they do when they arrive at their desks in Britain on a regular morning.

Whilst the Volcano was hopefully a once-in-a-generation event, SaaS users benefitted in a similar way when the UK came to a standstill in January, due to the harsh winter conditions and heavy snowfall. SaaS is a technology that can effectively eliminate the impact of adverse weather conditions and natural disasters by providing borderless access to work. The lesson to be learned now is that the value of cloud computing extends well beyond its scalability, and regular invisible upgrade cycles – it is also an important element of any disaster recovery strategy.

Last update : 23-06-2010 10:08

Keywords : Rising Above The Cloud Of Ash, Bullhorn, volcano, SAAS applications, Recruitment

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