Thursday, August 28, 2003 3:24 PM
For any business or law firm which lost a day or more of earnings resulting from the recent massive power outage, a real wake-up call was sounded. Business continuity plans already in place did not necessarily include action plans for a complete loss of the power grid in large sections of multiple states. Most websites, computer networks and wired phones were basically useless as they were either offline or inaccessible for people within the power loss area. Finally, voice cellphone connections were spotty, especially at the start of blackout, apparently due to being overwhelmed by sudden usage spikes.
However, as has been reported at length, some wireless services performed admirably throughout the blackout. Blackberry handhelds, for example, worked well for many people during the outage as their sole communication device.
If you needed to connect to an important client or another attorney in your firm during a blackout, how would you do it? What if you were in California and desperately needed a document that was sitting on a suddenly inaccessible server in New York City; how would you retrieve it?
These questions (and others) lead me to wonder if a perhaps a particularly viable business purpose for blawgs (and moblawgs), might be in the area of business continuity.
Audblog, for example, allows users to post audio messages to a weblog using only a cellphone. You call a preset number and leave a message. That message is automatically left as an audio file for anyone with the proper web address. Here is an
example. I could immediately see this communication model implemented into a secured extranet that lawyers involved in a case could access for information and emergency updates. Even more powerful, would be for the lawyers to retrieve the audio message via their cellphones, as well (if that doesn't already exist, I am sure it is but a matter a time).
I think this model is slightly different than the traditional voice messaging systems already in use. For one, a wireless-enabled moblawg concept could allow for anyone (not just one firm's employees) involved in a given case to connect to a central location for updates. And, revisiting a continuing theme with weblogs, the technology is relatively cheap.
Ultimately, a central goal for business continuity will be to allow for multiple, unrelated, methods to both send and retrieve information. With all of the derivative technologies spinning out of the weblog movement, my sense is that the legal vertical community may well see value in creating and develop tools and products which morph the basic blawg into a business continuity application. If so, when the next blackout hits, mobile blawgers will not miss a beat.