The Island’s business community is bracing for the worst, spending the week activating their IT and business continuity plans.Though Bermuda is projected to miss the brunt of the storm, the Island is still expected to experience tropical storm force winds overnight Saturday into Sunday, which could wreck havoc on running business as usual.But local disaster recovery experts say that for the most part, Bermuda-based companies have plans in place. Much of disaster recovery involves sensitive the storage, replication and back-up of sensitive data which, should they be lost, could cripple a company.“We haven’t seen a lot of panic this time,” Graham Pearson, CEO of Ignition, adding that of their 170 clients, about one third of them have disaster recovery plans that they are currently executing.Today they will be making decisions with their clients on whether to shut down their clients’ systems down or not, he said.“A number of clients host their data with us anyway here in Bermuda or our other locations so that problem goes away because we’re already hosting their data in a secure bunker,” he said.The same goes for QuoVadis, which has been fielding a lot of calls since Monday from clients looking to double-check their back-up plans.“Bermuda has relatively mature companies that have realised that we are in a storm belt and have proactive plans in place,” said Gavin Dent, CEO of QuoVadis Services Ltd.QuoVadis, which has two data centres in Bermuda and in Switzerland for clients to host their data, has two power feeds from Belco and if those feeds were to fail, the company has a generator with ten days worth of fuel.Some clients either host their data with QuoVadis or some put their equipment in their data centre.Ignition also has a secure data centre which is housed in the LinkedBermuda facility in Devonshire as well as Hibernia (outside Halifax) and Curacao.Both technology CEOs say that while data is extremely important, there’s another element of business continuing planning that should be emphasised.“A lot of what we found in the past is that it’s not so much the systems but the people — are they available to provide continuity of the business?” said Mr Pearson. “Systems are only part of it. It’s more of a human capital issue for those who have already had their disaster recovery plans in place.”He explained that some companies decide to either hand over the reins to another office, if they have that option, or take key people and move them off the Island.Mr Dent also felt that importance must be placed on making sure people are able to do their jobs.“It’s fine that you are replicating your IT but what are you doing as a company if you can’t get into the office or can’t log on to your computers?” he said. “It’s important as a company to not only focus on IT disaster recovery but also have business continuity planning in place so the front line of the business know what the procedures are in case they have to stay at home for five days and still be able to conduct business.”For that reason, QuoVadis offers its clients a work area recovery site, which is essentially a big office that is broken into smaller offices that is rented out to customers who fit out the space with their computers and data.“Companies can send their key staff to this area, maintained by us, that is guaranteed to have uninterrupted power supply and where they can log on to their data,” said Mr Dent.Mr Pearson, of Ignition, also suggests that companies not only back up their data but also their applications.“Even if you just have the data but lose your applications, it could take days or weeks to get that data back up and running on those applications,” he said.QuoVadis’ advice for companies that don’t have recovery plans in place?“Let this storm remind you that you really need to have these IT and BCP plans in place, early,” said Mr Dent. “Otherwise, you might not have a business to come back to.”