Origina’s Swine Influenza Insurance - Ensuring Business Continuity

Does your organisation have a business contingency plan in place in case your IT staff becomes infected?

With the growing threat of Swine Flu becoming a reality for many, experts agree that it's critical for companies to take proactive actions now rather than wait until a full pandemic is upon them and expose their business to the risks and outages that could occur.

Companies that have yet to devise a business contingency plan must assess and identify their exposures and address them immediately. Preparation is key, and being ready for the impact that the Influenza A (H1N1) outbreak can have on their workforce and operations is key.

Origina's goal is to support business in being prepared for the current outbreak, so that the impact on your business service will be kept to a minimum and to ensure continuity in essential business operations. Origina understands the importance of preventing a complete stoppage within your organisation, and as a result has developed a number of offerings to assist in being prepared for the unknown.

Our offerings will ensure that your organisation will still be able to depend on fully operational IT infrastructure by:

1) Origina providing the required level of skills remotely and securely at short notice or

2) Enabling your organisation with the necessary technology to provide simple, reliable and secure remote access to computer systems for your own staff without any disruption to your existing IT infrastructure.

Option 1 - Origina Swine Influenza Insurance Scheme

For the next 6 months Origina is offering a Swine Influenza Insurance Scheme in which clients can leverage a pool of skilled IT resources with competencies in over 60 difference technologies so that we can take over the reins in providing the required level of cover across the infrastructure to ensure that your IT systems run as expected for a small nominal fee. Origina delivers this service via our secure Rapid-Support technology platform which allows our consultants and engineers to respond immediately regardless of physical geographical location to gain remote access to your IT systems.

The Insurance Scheme costs €5,000, and includes the first 15 hours of guaranteed support on a technology service offering. As part of this service, Origina will engage with your IT department to review the correct operational procedures and process so that we prepare a tailored response plan and are fully armed and ready to respond at short notice to take over the day-to-day tasks of keeping your IT infrastructure in an operational state until your IT staff return to full operational readiness. Any work beyond the initial 15 hours is billed on an hourly basis according to our published skills coverage matrix which you can find below.

Technologies Services

IBM, Compellent, DELL / EMC, Storage Area Networks	Storage allocation, Configuration changes, administration, provisioning & configuration tuning, capacity reporting, technical planning, error log analysis, system diagnostics reviews, real time alaerts and SNMP traps configuration & analysis.
Brocade / McData / CiscoFC switches	Zoning changes, configuration change, error reporting & analysis, patches & firmware upgrades, documentation, zoning & ISL's, IP configuration, Fall over testing, performance testing & tuning.
TSM, NetBackup, BackupExec, Commvault, Sympana / Galaxy	Backup scheduling, restore requests, configuration changes, administration, configuration tuning, capacity reporting, technical planning, error log analysis, system diagnostics reviews, real - time alerts & SNMP traps configuration & anaysis.
Tape Libraries	Tape & drive issues, capacity, configuration, changes, compatibility issues.
IBM AIX, HP - UX, Sun Solaris	Tuning, security maintence and hardening, HACMP configuration, password, maintenance, error log analysis, system diagnostics reviews, LVM checks, NMON performance analysis, administration, LPAR provisioning & configuration, security changes, configuration changes, storage allocation, system event log analysis, performance analysis & tuning, server provisioning, ghosting, memory / CPU allocationchanges, storage allocation
Windows	Active directory admin, provisioning & configuration tuning, capacity reporting, technical planning, error log analysis, system diagnostics reviews, configuration changes, storage allocation, security / password management
Linux	Configuration changes, storage allocation, security / password management, system log analysis, security.
VMware ESX / V13	VM provisioning & configuration, tuning, OS & firmware upgrades & patches, security maintence & hardening, error log analysis, VM performance analysis & tuning, memory / CPU allocation changes, storage allocation.
Hyper - V	VM provisioning & configuration, tuning, OS & firmware upgrades & patches security maintence & hardening, error log analysis, VM performance analysis & tuning, memory / CPU allocation changes, storage allocation.
Oracle	Performance analysis & tuning, database job maintence, Backup (RMAN) maintence, database cloning (creating test databases), database CPU (critical patch update)testing & application, table space changes, storage allocation, consistency checks, verify archiving, check system bottlenecks, (CPU, I/O, memory), collect & review volumertic data, restore setting, sunguard monitoring.
Microsoft SQL server	Verify archiving, check system bottlenecks (CPU, I/O, memory), check scheduled tasks, storage capacity & performance checks, defragmentation, restore testing, table space changes, storage allocation.
Laptop, Desktop, Thin clients	Desktop & laptop imaging, configuration changes, software installations, all user applications, Outlook, MS office, network issues, password resets, Wyse terminal issues, hardware issues.
Blackberry, Mobile Broadband	Unit setup, data transfer, connection issues, password resets, VPN issues, ISP issues, synchronisation, blackberry server.

Option 2 - Empowering your business with your own simple, secure remote access platform

For those customers who already have sufficient levels of staff to cover in the event of being affected with an outbreak, but without a simple, reliable and secure remote access platform, Origina can deploy the necessary secure remote technology platform non-disruptively to meet your needs. This will then ensure that you can avail of some of the key benefits of our Rapid-Support technology, using a local appliance. For further details on the secure remote platform, please click here.

Key industry and government advisory bodies have also urged organisations to put contingency plans in place to cope with the spread of the Influenza A (H1N1) virus in their region. Health officials in Ireland, the UK, and mainland Europe have stated that a major outbreak of the virus would have a significant impact on businesses and absenteeism alone could cost small companies in excess of €90m (£80m) in sick pay alone! Workplaces should also be prepared for at least 15% absenteeism related to flu.

In the next few weeks a company could easily be faced with the following:

Operating with considerably reduced staff numbers
Reduced supply of raw materials
Travel restrictions

Director of Innovation at Origina, Rowan O'Donoghue says companies will leave themselves unnecessary exposed without adequately planning and providing the appropriate level of attention to the warning being issued by health officials and government bodies.

In accordance with public notices related to Influenza A (H1N1), it is recommended in the event of a breakout, employees should either work from home or find alternative work spaces from which to conduct their normal day to day activities. A company will also need to determine alternative means of getting work done without direct contact, and how to accommodate recovering employees, or employees who are caring for close family members.

If you would like to find out more about these service offerings from Origina, or even to discuss how we could assist with developing your own ideas on how to provide the required level of cover, call Jamie Ware today on 01 - 2942300 or email Jamie on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

For up to date information on the Outbreak of swine flu, or how your organisation can prevent such an outbreak please visit:

Irish health officials’ Swine Flu Advice

World Health Organisation Swine Flu Advice

United Kingdom health officials' Swine Flu Advice

American health officials' Swine Flu Advice