H1N1 is Upon Us:
Are You Truly Prepared?

By Pete Basiliere, Gartner

H1N1 is upon us – businesses, schools and hospitals are all experiencing the effect of having many people sick or caring for the sick. Have you actually tested your pandemic preparedness plans? Are you ready should the “last mile” of Internet access for remote workers be unavailable?

According to the Center for Disease Control, the rule of thumb for pandemic planning is that 40 percent of the workforce will not be in the workplace for an extended period.

Astute high volume transaction output (HVTO) organizations are testing their plans. Regulus, a strategic document outsourcing provider, literally put all of their employee names into a hat (including management and support staff), randomly pulled 40 percent of the names out and then tested the plan without those people participating.

Moreover, what about the rest of your IT organization? The telecommunications carriers say their wide area networks (WANs) can handle the added capacity of a 40 percent increase. However, a serious potential problem lies in the “last mile” in the residential Internet access loop.

Work at Home (WAH) Internet usage for commercial purposes typically takes place in the daytime, when consumer traffic is at a lull. The problem in an emergency, such as a pandemic, is that consumer Internet usage will be happening at the same time as WAH usage, mainly because children will be home from school (who drive the bandwidth ratios today) and using the Internet as they would during the evening.

“The bottom line is that the last-mile DSL and cable modem networks are where remote access falls apart. Backbones will be affected, but the network edge will crash,” according to John Girard, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

Gartner suggests three possible alternatives to improve Internet bandwidth for WAH strategies:

1. When employees are forced to work from home, they lose the benefits provided by their office WAN optimization controller (WOC). Some organizations are deploying software WOC client software on every laptop to help mitigate the bandwidth and latency issues.

2. If it is only necessary to accelerate browser-based applications, or if software cannot be installed on an employee's home computer, a second solution is to use client applets that work with data-center-resident application delivery controllers or WOCs. “These browser applets are zero-footprint installations (ActiveX or JavaScript) that can significantly reduce bandwidth and latency-induced performance problems and may be enough to make some employees productive,” said Joe Skorupa, research vice president at Gartner.

3. A third solution is to bypass the wired last mile altogether and switch to a wireless connection, such as 3G or WiMAX or satellite. However, while last-mile bypass may fix the access network problem, it will not fix the common latency-induced problems that arise during surges of unplanned emergency access. In an emergency, always assume that wireless services will be oversubscribed.

Gartner has created a Special Coverage section on www.Gartner.com, “The Pandemic Threat,” where comprehensive research related to pandemic planning can be found. Gartner analysts will provide regular updates regarding actions enterprises should take as the situation evolves. The Special Coverage section can be found at http://www.gartner.com/it/products/research/coverage/pandemic09.jsp.

Gartner analysts are also providing updates on the Gartner Business Continuity blog at http://blogs.gartner.com/business-continuity/.