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How to run your business when the lights go out
There has been a lot of news chatter recently about power outages this winter because of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. With my experience as a South African of dealing with load shedding, now is the time to plan for possible outages over the winter so that your business can continue to function.
Here are our top 5 suggestions to help prepare your business for power outages
1. Move to the cloud
Adopting a cloud-based business solution for your business can help you remain productive without the risk of losing work between or during any power outages. Using a cloud hosted email and document solution like Microsoft 365 could be a life saver for your business.
2. Investing in a UPS (battery backup power supply)
Using a UPS to power critical infrastructure within your business is a proven and trusted method of keeping your systems up during power fluctuations or outages. These ‘giant batteries’ vary greatly in cost and capability, so it’s important to speak to your IT provider for guidance on where to best use these and which UPS to purchase for your business.
3. Work from home
We are very comfortable with working from home after COVID changed the way we work. If working from home suits your business, then you are probably already setup for that and if your home address and your business address are not both impacted by a power outage then this might be the best and most cost-effective solution for your team.
4. Invest in an alternative energy source
Having solar, wind or a backup diesel generator might be the only way to keep your business open. This is not a quick option; it may also be expensive and will require forward planning. If you favour this approach, then don’t delay in getting your preferred solution installed and tested as soon as possible.
5. Reduce your energy usage (save on bills at the same time)
We can all help with this by using less energy and so reducing the load on the national grid to lower the risk of potential outages. Have a walk around your office building and turn off any equipment that is not business critical. It’s time to decommission those old servers, replace those old monitors and PCs with more power efficient current models.
Let’s keep out businesses running this winter, we can’t afford not to!
If you would like further information on how we might be able to help this winter to keep your business open,
please contact us on 01943666711 or by email on support@cactus-it.co.uk.