Natural disasters, accidents or terrorist attacks provide a perfect platform for marketing executives to push products or services in front of resellers and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that has created a large plume of ash is no different.
Usually security vendors show a heightened state of awareness to any potential sales pitch but Virgin Media Business has wasted no time in advising businesses to hold virtual meetings instead of facing the possibility of being stranded abroad.
“Today’s disruption serves as another reminder that businesses need to put contingency plans in place to deal with unforeseen events,” said Alistair McKinnon, senior product manager for IP Multimedia at Virgin Business Media.
The impact of volcanic eruptions on project deadlines and productivity has never effectively been gauged in the UK up to now.
However, Virgin claims remote collaboration tools such as videoconferencing can help avoid such instances.
Cloud computing and unified communication provider Outsourcery has also got in on the act by upping the noise about its instant messaging, presence information, voice and video conferencing.
“This technology has proved vital for many SMEs as travel becomes increasingly difficult through a number of natural and weather related events, as well as more normal commuting congestion,” said Mark Seeman, product strategy and development director at Outsourcery.
Perhaps channel analyst Canalys will consider investing in remote working technologies to prevent a recurrence of the cancellations that have seen key employees stranded.
Speaking to MicroScope from Oslo, Alastair Edwards, principal analyst at Canalys said “there are thick black clouds here, it is like Pompeii” before the connection was lost.
With airports closed and flights cancelled across Britain and Scandinavia, marketing execs will need more than a little blue sky thinking to re-define the term the cloud.
April 16, 2010
