Data Call Weathers Harvey, Thanks To Elevation, And The Good Kind Of Cloud Right Now

August 29, 2017 by Dave Haynes

A couple of industry friends in Houston have managed to so far make it through the ceaseless storm dubbed Harvey with minimal impacts.

Tim Vance, CEO of subscription content provider Data Call Technologies, sent a note out on Linkedin letting people know business has not been disrupted, despite the immediate area around his street-level office space in suburban Houston getting drenched with somewhere between 10 and 16 inches of rain … so far.

Based on some elevation maps, and some eyewitness reports, we are confident that as this passes, our offices will remain unharmed. We thank everyone for their concerns of our well being, writes Vance.

Through the company’s experiences over the years of past Texas storms, a decision mandated that our data center was to be removed from our corporate spaces. By the time hurricane Rita came to Texas in 2005, all of the company’s production servers were co-located off site. This proved to be quite prudent as we survived Hurricane Ike in 2008. By 2014, all production servers, test servers, web servers, digital assets, as well as company email servers, were sent to the cloud with strong redundancy in place. This architecture has enabled the company to proudly guarantee it’s solid SLA’s and endure such a catastrophic event as we are experiencing today.

We are blessed with all of our staff members, their families, and their homes being safely accounted for. At this time, all staff spared by the flooding. Most of Friendswood and the surrounding areas are underwater. Entire families are being rescued from their flooded homes by so many great people by boat and brought to shelter. We thank not only our first responders – We thank every person out there helping their neighbors. Houston, we have a problem.

This is what parts of Friendswood look like:

Brad Parler, the guy behind the brilliant corporate communications content at Blinds.com, told me by email he and his family are lucky to live in an area of the city that’s built up like a mini island (some developer was smart!) and remains high and dry. Lights are on and bandwidth is fine, though he notes many colleagues at his company are wet and probably under  water now financially.

Hussain Ali of Houston Dynamic Displays says he’s also dry. “We’re just monitoring the Addicks Reservior levels as the neighbor behind me is seeing the water level rise. But the rain has slowed down, so there is hope. I have my water crafts ready if need to evacuate.”

The solutions provider says his team can work remotely, and while local installs are off for now, there is still work outside the region. “I think more important now is to help fellow Houstonians in need and it will continue for a while.”

Terrible situation down there. You can help by donating money to the American Red Cross.

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