Preparing for the worst and cloud-based systems both pay off for Christchurch tech firms.
Christchurch computer company boss Keith Jessop had been in the air 20 minutes, en route to Auckland, when February 22nd's 6.3-magnitude quake struck.
Fortunately, the six of his 11 Christchurch staff in their eighth-floor CBD office suffered only bruises and an ankle injury, and were able to make their way out of the building. But for another hour, Jessop was blissfully unaware of what he'd left behind.
"I didn't find out until we landed and the pilot told us," says Jessop, whose company, EMDA, supplies software to manufacturing and distribution businesses.
He jumped into a car and headed for home, arriving about 24 hours later.
Jessop returned to a home that suffered water damage from a ruptured hot water heater, and a business that was off-limits within the central city cordon.
"We don't have access to the building at all but we can still operate because of our back-up systems."
Jessop says the September 4 prelude to Christchurch's present nightmare jolted EMDA into revising its back-up plans, so data could be retrieved more quickly after systems had been knocked out.
"After the September earthquake we made a priority of closing the gaps in our back-up plan. So we were reasonably well prepared."
With EMDA's Auckland office keeping things ticking over, and a combination of on- and off-site backups, EMDA's Christchurch team were back in business in temporary premises by the start of this week.
Other Christchurch technology firms fared less well in the latest quake. A roll call of members of the Canterbury Software Cluster elicited mixed tales.
Owen Scott of Concentrate, a technology marketer, reported his office had been "trashed" for the second time, and asked if anyone had a particular drive that matched his back-up tapes to enable him to recover data.
He won't be alone. Auckland company Computer Forensics, which specialises in salvaging data from damaged hard disks, says it saw a lift in work from Christchurch after the September 4 quake and anticipates the same again. Miracles sometimes happen - with computer hardware, at least. Greg Adams, who runs system-support company My IT Manager, says one customer fished a server out of the silt filling his Woolston office, emptied the muck out of the case and fired it up successfully.
Adams' business came through the quake largely unscathed, thanks to the fact that rather than rely on its own physical servers, it rents capacity on hardware in Auckland and Hamilton, accessing it over a broadband connection - the so-called cloud computing model.
"It's certainly a bit of a story to tell to move people towards cloud offerings," he says.
The experience of software cluster member RPM Retail was another advertisement for cloud computing. "Our internal systems are mainly cloud-based ... and this allows us to carry on as usual," says John Saywell, head of the company, which analyses retailers' performance and sends them sales advice. If the retailers' shops are still standing, that is. Saywell says he has CBD retail customers who are unable to trade.
His offer of help was typical of the supportive messages being passed between cluster members.
In the same spirit, a group operating as CrisisCampNZ has established a website, eq.org.nz, to which anyone can submit reports on availability of services or hazards in Christchurch. Reports sent via email, text message and Twitter, and gathered from the news media, are vetted for reliability by volunteers around the world and the information is displayed on a map of the city.
The idea of the Christchurch Recovery Map was to aggregate information from trusted sources, spokesman Nat Torkington told National Radio.
Within a few days of the quake, the map showed reports - on functioning ATMs, water supplies, closed roads and so on - for more than 1000 places in the city.
The site has a link to Google Person Finder, in which New Zealander Craig Nevill-Manning, director of Google's New York software engineering team, played a development role.
The service lets anyone with information about someone in a disaster zone upload what they know to help search for friends or relatives.
The software had its origins in Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, was refined during the Haiti and Chile quakes and was ready for prime time on February 22.
When the going gets tough, geeks reach for their computers - and we can be thankful to them for it.
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist
