When we addressed the pandemic plan for our company’s operations last month, we treated it more like a paper test to see how ready we were to go fully online. We took it with exaggeration and a certain amount of humour.
Last week we also had an ISO certification and it was discussed there as well, we wanted to know how well prepared we were and what to improve.
Regular tests of our motor-generators and backup systems took place this morning. Everything was fine, just like any normal day.
In the morning we were informed that 3 workers of one of our contractors live literally a short distance from the first confirmed case of SARS-CoV-2 (causing COVID-19 disease) in South Bohemia. Although these people probably did not come into direct contact with the infected person and were only doing work in our new DC2 datacenter in the last few days, where they only saw our datacenter administrators briefly, it reminded us how real the threat is also in Hluboká nad Vltavou.
At noon, we received a report of a positive virus finding on the same street as some of the workers’ homes, and we knew we had to act. In addition, one of our programmers is from the same village where the infected person lives and there have been personal contacts there in the last few days. There was nothing to wait for!
Management has issued an order to activate our pandemic plan.
We had a meeting and everyone (except 2 colleagues) went home.
We immediately ordered a home-office and mandatory preventive home quarantine for all. It is not a decision of officials, but an internal decision within our company.
We don’t want to put our colleagues at any unnecessary risk when it is not necessary. The health of all our colleagues is the most important thing.
We had to take immediate precautions.
It must also be admitted that this afternoon the company’s director was due to leave for a planned trip abroad, which he immediately cancelled. The question anyway is how this would be combined with the state of emergency subsequently declared by the government.
What’s going to happen here?
The plan is that everyone who does not already have remote access will be assigned a VPN. Through here, they can access our administration normally, from which they can perform all the tasks as before. Read-only access is enabled over the VPN and changes must be authorized in one additional step.
Of course, there will continue to be round-the-clock customer support via the community website, contact form, online chat, email, including technical support and the sales department. However, it is possible that we will temporarily suspend the chat until colleagues get used to it. Thank you in advance for your understanding.
The operation in the datacentre will be restricted in terms of physical movement of people. There will only be non-stop support and an on-call technician to replace any faulty hardware. People will rotate after 12 hours.
Our warehouses are full and we have enough servers directly connected and ready to go.
There are a lot of us living in Hluboká, the technicians have their own cars or company cars. If necessary, we can solve more complex problems. We are able to deal with anything and at any time one of us can come in and sort anything out. 7 employees of our company live within 1 kilometer.
Of course, we were all instructed to report any health problems so that we would know where we stood.
We will not restrict any services and do not plan to restrict any services
VPN access and remote working is nothing new to most of us. All developers and senior staff normally work from home when needed. It will be new for a couple of junior technicians and some customer support.
So, at least initially, we expect that there may be the occasional scratch in customer support before everyone gets used to it.
Although we have a very well-developed and fine-tuned internal communication system, more complex customer questions were often solved verbally by colleagues. They simply asked for the current status, advice or a tip on how the customer could solve the problem. Unfortunately, this option will not be possible now, so solving some of the more complex problems may take longer. However, we are planning on video conferencing, so in time this will also be fine.
This is basically the only complication we foresee with active services.
We won’t limit development
We do not want to restrict the development of new services in any way. We anticipate that the change in working habits will be a shock to some colleagues, so service development will be adapted accordingly. Working full time from home is not just about you, but your family has to adapt as well. Our primary concern is to ensure smooth operation and customer support. The others have time.
Next week WEDOS Cloud was planned. We already have it ready and we will start the test operation as soon as possible.
For other projects (WEDOS CD, WEDOS WebSite, WEDOS App, WEDOS CDN and a few others) we will see. They are not a priority right now. Maybe we’ll find that our developers and engineers are comfortable working from home and the services will be here before we know it 🙂
Conclusion
Our pandemic plan has many more points. For example, to replenish the warehouses or to supply everything for several months.
But hopefully it won’t take that long 🙂 Now we all have a mandatory home-office for 14 days. So 26. we can meet again in March. If there are no complications… 🙂
None of us ever thought we’d be this close. But we’re ready, so we’re not surprised. 🙂
We thank all clients for their understanding.