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Wed December 19, 2007

Questions and Answers with Justin Cowan

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Justin Cowan
Today's Q&A is with the owner and chief operating officer of Oklahoma City-based Element Fusion, which builds Web sites and applications for clients around the world from its offices at 5400 N Grand Blvd., Suite 515.
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Q: How did last week's ice storm disrupt your business and that of your clients?

A: At noon on Monday, we lost power to our corporate offices. Since all of our work is on computers and the Internet, our team couldn't work here. So, everyone had to disperse and scramble for any place they could find with power and a Web connection. We all worked remotely for half of Monday and all of Tuesday before the power came back on Tuesday night. Our corporate phones also went down, so clients were unable to reach us by phone, but fortunately we were able to post updates for them on our company blog, which was alive and well.


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Q: We hear a lot about "tele-commuting” in business these days; what was the most unlikely spot that someone was able to use and get their work done?

A: We are fortunate that most all our work is on the Internet so as long as we can find power and a Web connection, we are good to go. We unofficially opened our "Edmond Branch” at one of our employee's homes, but only two people showed up there. The rest sought out friends and relatives with power. One of our sales consultants had a generator running his refrigerator, a lamp, and a laptop. Our office manager set up shop at the Blue Bean Coffee Shop in southwest Oklahoma City. Plus, our consulting director worked solely from her iPhone. In fact, several of our team members say their iPhones saved them. In a pinch, they can even be used as flashlights. Everyone's spirits stayed pretty high and there were a lot of fun group e-mails flying back and forth throughout the day. We have a team of consultants in Houston who kept reminding us that it was 60 degrees down there. All the while, our core development team was working hard to restore the 20 percent of our systems that were down. I'm really proud of our team which not only handled the immediate needs caused by the emergency but kept everything moving right along with our current development projects as well.

Q: As a Web-hosting company, where are the servers that house the Web sites for your clients, and how did they hold up during the icy conditions?

A: Most all of our hosting operations take place at our tier-four data center in Dallas. With multiple redundancies on every critical system, that data center is built to endure even the most devastating natural disaster. Plus, it's in Dallas, so it held up fine. However, we had about 20 percent of our clients' sites hosted here in our local data center. The power outage did take those sites down once our backup systems were exhausted. To correct this, our team removed the servers from our offices, took them to their homes which had power, and uploaded everything to our Dallas servers. The nice thing is that as a result of this storm, we now have 100 percent of our hosting at our Dallas data center, which provides an extremely high level of security for our clients.

Q: What lessons have you learned from the ice storm that can help prepare you for the next one?

A: We've learned there is a great advantage to having your work online. As developers of online software, we are big fans of the "software as a service” model. We utilize online software from other companies for many parts of our business, which allows us to continue work even when forced to work remotely. Currently, we use online software for e-mail, project management, documentation, calendaring and other needs. We will continue to expand our use of online software to be even more independent of our local network in the future. We were also struck by the realization of how much our business has grown nationally and internationally. It's important for us to recognize that even though we have an icy situation here in Oklahoma City, it may be sunny and warm for our customers in other parts of the nation and the world. Therefore, we refused to use this storm as an excuse and worked to provide a level of service they could feel good about even if they had no idea we were in the midst of a storm.

Business Writer Jim Stafford

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