IBM offers flu readiness service for companies

Computerworld - IBM said today that it has started a service to assess a company's ability to cope with a pandemic flu outbreak and deal with widespread employee absenteeism and some of the other problems that might arise.

Brent Woodworth, global leader of IBM's Crisis Response Team, said IBM will review a company's existing disaster preparedness procedures and interview company officials to look for gaps in planning. As people become ill, are quarantined or decide to just stay home, companies will be forced to make do with fewer workers and deal with possible supply chain disruptions.

"What are your minimums for operating, and when do you shut down -- when are there things you can no longer do?" said Woodworth, explaining the kinds of issues IBM will study.

Although more companies are beginning to make pandemic plans, most aren't taking any specific steps, said Roberta Witty, an analyst at Gartner Inc. But she said that planning for pandemic is different from planning for the kind of disasters that companies typically prepare for.

Traditional business disaster planning "looks at facility outages, not people outages," said Witty. With that in mind, she recommends advance planning: "You are not going to make these decisions once your workforce is down 30%."

Key to coping is ensuring that management is flexible enough to make changes as circumstances shift.

"People need to hear exactly what's going on, and we recommend that they do that a minimum of two to three times a day during an active crisis," said Woodworth. That's something that didn't happen during Katrina, he said. "When the message does get out clearly, people do listen and it gives them the ability to plan and respond more effectively."

IBM is pricing the service from $10,000 and $150,000, with the lower price aimed at small businesses.

Witty said that while pandemic planning is not yet widespread, it is taking place at some organizations.

For instance, the government of Florida's Orange County has strengthened its ability to support workers from home, said John Amiot, the county's IT enterprise operations manger. The county earlier could only support "a small select group" of employees from their home, he said. Now it can support some 3,000.

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