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When your technology provider bites the dust
By Gillian Kerr, RealWorld Systems

The information in this article is current as of June 8, 2001.
Shut-downs of technology firms in the last few months have left many organizations high and dry with the sudden loss of web sites, online services and mission-critical data. This happened to Good Enough Information Systems a couple of months ago, and I thought our experience might be helpful to other organizations.
In summary, we lost our tollfree phone number and were unreachable for several days until we re-established service with another vendor. However, this problem had been several months in the making. It took us far longer than we expected to fix it.
Our phone system uses several different vendors. Our corporate phone number is provided by J2, formerly Jfax. It forwards all faxes and voice messages to our email, which is provided by OLM, our web site host. In order to ensure our independence from J2, we bought a tollfree number from WorldxChange, a discount long distance service, which was forwarded to the J2 number. We were concerned about the sustainability of J2 because there have been a number of merges and closures in the dot-com space. Note: During this entire process, we've never had any serious trouble with J2, even though that seemed to be the most vulnerable element of our telecommunications system.
Our first problem was with WorldxChange. Their long distance service worked reliably, but they never responded to customer queries, and it was almost impossible to reach a competent customer service rep. Note: Most of our technology vendors provide appalling customer service, so it took us a while to realize just how bad it was. After several weeks of unusually terrible service, we decided to switch to Sprint Canada for our long distance phone calls and toll free lines.
At the same time, we started experiencing problems with our email service. Some of our email messages were going astray. It seemed to be a problem with two different vendors. We decided to switch our email to Critical Path, which according to reviews has one of the best and most robust email services in the world. Unfortunately, just as we ordered the email service, Critical Path went through a huge restructuring and layoff exercise in response to serious financial problems, and it was three months before they got around to processing our request. During that period, they cancelled some of their service offerings entirely. Finally the email was set up and it's been working perfectly ever since. Note: Most technology companies seem to have a poor communications between marketing and technical people. You can't predict the quality of one by the quality of the other. Also, most technology companies are going through financial problems right now, and you have to assume that closure is always a possibility.
Back to the phone service. Sprint Canada informed us that they couldn't take over the tollfree number without an invoice from WorldxChange that confirmed we had a right to the number. WorldxChange had not been sending invoices for several months, and we had no records that would satisfy Sprint. After weeks of phoning WorldxChange, including calls to the V.P. of Customer Service, we obtained a printed invoice. However, just at that point, Sprint Canada went through a major restructuring exercise, and we were unable to get any response from any of their customer service representatives, including our assigned account manager. For weeks.
Eventually, we connected with a manager at Sprint Canada who took pity on us. She promised to help us switch the phone number within 10 days. Five days later, the tollfree number stopped working. WorldxChange, with no warning, had apparently gone out of business. At the same time, the residential long distance service that they had been providing to several other people stopped working.
Sprint later informed us that if they had not been in the process of switching the phone numbers when WordxChange dropped the ball, we would have lost our tollfree number entirely. We would have had to reprint our letterhead, business cards and so on. As it was, it took about four months to make a switch that should have taken a total of about ten working days. But who would have thought that Sprint Canada, of all organizations, would behave like any other dot-com in trouble?
Finally, a couple of weeks after we successfully moved to Sprint, we got an enthusiastic email from WorldxChange suggesting that we consider selling their services. We have not yet received any explanation of why their long distance service stopped working, and there is no mention of service disruptions on their web site.

How to plan ahead for when trouble arises
The woes described above are a familiar story to anyone working in technology these days. For another article on the same topic, see "Stranded off the information highway". The author concludes that, "Disaster recovery has a new meaning if you rely on outside vendors to handle a critical component of your e-business. Make sure that your most important vendors are competent and financially solvent. Also, creating and documenting a complete checklist of Internet access responsibilities by all parties involved is mandatory. Furthermore, most organizations should consider a contingency plan in the event of a total ISP shutdown. It could happen sooner than you realize."
My advice for nonprofits and very small businesses is somewhat different. Almost every technology company is in the process of re-examining their staffing, business model, services and pricing. Many formerly free services are charging fees, and many are being bought out or disappearing. It is really difficult for a small to tiny customer (which would describe most nonprofits) to get a complete profile of a vendor's financial solvency, or to negotiate clear and customized checklists of responsibilities. Instead, consider the following strategies:

Back up your data, and have a plan that will permit you to switch to another provider quickly if necessary. You may even consider setting up a parallel service that you can switch over to with a few hours notice. For example, my office has highspeed internet service from both Rogers and Sympatico. When Rogers service goes down (as it does constantly) my internet server automatically switches to Sympatico ADSL.

Be sensitive to declines in the services provided by your vendor, such as absent customer service reps, and treat the declines as danger signals. Address them with the vendor, and try to find out what's happening. It is possible that the vendor is abandoning free or low-cost services, and in some situations it may make sense to upgrade your service rather than leaving the vendor.

Try to choose services that have solid industry support and that are attracting investment even in this financial climate. For example, we're pleased that our online accounting program, Netledger, has recently been adopted by Oracle. Another approach is to use good solid open-source tools. If any one technology firm goes under, you don't want to be stuck with a proprietary tool that no-one else can update. Look for services that can be maintained by other developers in case your current developer disappears.

Keep a good list of all your technology vendors, with contact names, usernames and passwords, instructions, documentation and so on. Sometimes the problem happens in your own organization, not in the technology firm's. If you have one administrative person who is responsible for technology services, and he/she keeps all the passwords on sticky papers hidden in various places around the office, you're in trouble. When he/she is sick, or leaves the company, or loses the passwords, you may have a lot of difficulty figuring out who does what.

Don't give up on online services. There's a massive consolidation going on in the industry, and the big players (including Microsoft, Oracle and Sun) are moving towards more web based services. Also, running your own in-house technology services is no fun unless your organization is big enough to have a decent technology staff.
Good luck!
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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.

President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net
Read my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net