Last weekend, Michigan’s Lower Peninsula was struck by a late winter storm with wet, heavy snow and high winds. According to the Battle Creek Enquirer, more than 200,000 residents and businesses were left without power. Today the snows have melted away and it looks like Spring outside, but this is a great opportunity to consider what would have happened to your business if this storm hit your area.

If a storm like this happened during the business week, could your business continue to operate?

Questions like this used to keep us up at night. But we sleep easy these days because there are a ton of innovative technologies now available that offer peace of mind when things go wrong.

• Microsoft Office 365 – Anywhere, anytime access to your email, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any Web-enabled device.
• Microsoft Sharepoint – Centralized, cloud-based access to your business’s information and applications through an intranet-like portal.
• Hosted Solutions – Outsourcing your servers with Providence Hosted Solutions means less daily stress and worry, and redundant internet services and power backups (like diesel generators) means your business keeps running even if your electricity is not.

What if the worst case scenario does happen? Providence Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery services can help you plan for nearly every contingency, and will help you get things up and running ASAP if and when something does go wrong.

Jeff Dettloff is President and Chief Problem Solver at Providence, a Lansing IT Consulting firm.