Of all the magnificent failures…

Of all the magnificent failures I get to deal with @OWN, from servers blowing up to SLA going up in smoke to earthquakes and difficult vendors, one of my most disappointing failures in 2008 is that I’m practically unable to do anything for the businesses that are in the path of Hurricane (or TS) Fay..

For years Own Web Now and my partners have done all we can to provide some free last minute relief for people about to be punched, lights out, by a hurricane. Everything from offsite backups, FTP space to move critical files up, ETRN when the power goes down so that mail can still get there, ExchangeDefender, etc – your usual ad hoc last minute stuff that the business either didn’t plan to get or simply could not afford.

Should one business provide free services to another business, in an emergency, even if their competitors had invested money (and thereby traded away some competitive advantage) – isn’t that unfair? Perhaps, but sometimes there is a little more to things than just pure cutthroat business competition. Sometimes it’s the economic survival of the ecosystem that we live in, and the same system that has made it possible for us to become what we are today. On a personal level, Florida is where I live and Florida (lottery) paid for me to go to college (Go Gators! Hooray for socialism!) so it’s not like I don’t owe it the slightest bit of proactive help when I’m in a position to do so.

Unfortunately, this year we are just swamped and in this down economy we are doing all we can to just keep up with orders, support and the new products we’re launching. So it saddens me to admit that this year we are just not in the position to do what we’ve been able to do over the past few years. It sucks.

So we sit here and hope for the best. Let it rain!