After
The Smoke Clears:
The Business Aftermath Of The Terrorist Attacks
9/20/01
I
was in Scotland, attending (of course) a vendor technology briefing
on September 11th, when the world changed, perhaps forever.
When I returned home (after five days of cancelled flights, frantic
phone calls, and many trips to the Web), my Email box was
overflowing with hundreds (nearly a thousand) of messages, more than
half of them about the events in New York and Washington, D.C. –
many more of my correspondents made references to them.
That
made me wonder:
(1)
What was likely to change in how we do business; and
(2) How would technology facilitate such changes?
Substitutes
For Travel
One
thing was apparent as I read my mail. We’re all a lot less
willing to travel, whether it’s to the next city or across the
country. Conferences were postponed or cancelled outright.
Face-to-face briefings became web conferences or telephone calls.
The travel industry may not like it very much, but the terrorists
have accelerated a trend tight budgets had already set in motion.
It’s a lot cheaper and safer to put together a web or
teleconference than to gather our physical presences for a meeting.
Let
us note for the record that it’s not exactly the same thing.
The camaraderie, the networking, the marketing, and the friendships
that are made and extended through business meetings are absent or
supported much more thinly via virtual events. Someday, when
cyberspace is more immersive and our digital personas can meet and
mingle – and feel the effects of two glasses of wine or a gourmet
dinner – this might change. Today, we can communicate across
space and time, but not at the same level.
Communication
We
live in a wired world. Telephone communications, networks,
Internet connections – all depend on wired connections. A
major physical catastrophe like the World Trade Center (WTC) event
disrupts connections and interferes with communications.
On
September 11th, we proved two things which we “knew” on some
level, but had never tested on such a large scale. The
Internet, designed specifically to be invulnerable to an atomic
bomb, performed superbly. Individual ISP’s might have lost
their connections (or their power) but the Internet itself remained
standing. Moreover, it processed amazing amounts of traffic
and was a lifeline for those of us who found the telephone system
available only sporadically or not at all.
Wireless
devices, especially phones, were miraculous. They were in the
center of the action, sending messages from the doomed planes and
from victims trapped in the WTC, but they also let thousands
communicate their location to rescuers, let friends and family know
that they were safe, and permit rescue workers to coordinate their
efforts. In fact, my first news of the tragedy, as we drove to
a historic Scottish battlefield, came from an alphanumeric pager,
linked to a newswire.
Back-Up
And Recovery
Looking
at the rubble of the WTC, one could but hope that its occupants
worked for companies that practiced good back-up techniques.
We hope that they backed up every file every day and kept these
back-ups off site, using either the Internet or other automated
mechanisms to facilitate their transfer without the need to depend
on human hands and minds.
Firms
which practice good back-up techniques can theoretically move into
another location immediately after a disaster and have their entire
IT infrastructure, right down to yesterday’s market analysis and
accounts receivables, downloaded to newly installed servers and
desktops. Even more simply, companies can employ xSP
architectures to host the data and simply access it from another
site.
Several
days after the WTC blast, we noted one of our emails included an
offer from a vendor who could provide a PBX-like service, connecting
workers in their homes or in multiple temporary locations, as if
they were occupying their usual single, shared office space.
We
expect many IT managers will be auditing their back-up and recovery
procedures this month.
Distributed
Workforces
Few
large companies could be significantly damaged by the WTC blast,
although loosing even a single employee is unnecessary and tragic.
Smaller companies who occupied offices in the WTC and in nearby
buildings will find it much harder to recoup their losses and move
forward. Such disasters are a strong argument for distributed
workforces. If workers are dispersed in many locations, it is
unlikely that the company’s employees and the experience and
intellectual assets they embody can so easily be lost. We’d
bet that some companies will choose in the future for more, smaller
offices. We’d also bet that they may choose to move away
from downtown New York and from the target-appeal of soaring
skyscrapers.
Telecommuting,
satellite offices sharing networked information and other uses of
technology to support a dispersed but connected workforce are likely
to multiply.
Economic
Issues
The
events of September 11th occurred in a United States which was
sitting on the brink of a recession. It is likely that the
bombing of the WTC pushed the economy over the edge although many
economists believe the recession will be short-lived. In fact,
many of the companies announcing big layoffs (airlines, for
example), were already in trouble before September 11. A week
of cancellations, fewer passengers, and more expensive security
measures simply pushed them over the edge.
On
the other hand, most of the companies who suffered grave physical
damage to buildings and assets (furniture, computer hardware,
networks, software, and so forth) were well insured. Insurance
stocks may suffer, but technology stocks will get a boost from the
necessary replacements. The construction trades in New York
City will also get a boost from the necessary demolition and
rebuilding activities which are likely to continue for at least
several years.
If the U.S. government pursues an extended
policy of aggression against terrorists and their hosts, the economy
will also get the usual boost that such wartime spending brings.
No president plans to spend his way out of an economic downturn this
way, but it may, in fact, come to pass. We would hope that we
find a better way to return to peace and prosperity.
(back to top)
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