After a year’s development and beta testing ICM has announced that its Emergency Office home working solution is now generally available for the UK market.

Emergency Office aims to quickly provision home working following loss of workarea or during a pandemic and allows employees to access their corporate network and applications totally securely from a home PC, an Internet cafe, or other non-office location.

To use Emergency Office the employee simply plugs the preconfigured Emergency Office USB memory stick into his/her PC and enters their personal log-in details. The solution then launches a virtual desktop of their standard office PC image which can be accessed following the user's normal login and password regime. This virtual desktop is launched in a 'sandbox environment' and is totally secure. No cross-contamination from the user’s host PC can occur. Users are able to access and use the same systems and applications that they would use in their own office or that their colleagues based in an ICM business recovery centre are using during the disaster/incident. All applications and data are delivered/stored on the corporate recovery server, leaving no trace on the host PC.

ICM believes that Emergency Office provides various benefits which widen out corporate disaster recovery options beyond the 30 percent of staff that are typically covered by a workarea contract::

- It minimises lost productivity as staff who would otherwise be unable to work can continue to be productive during an incident. It means that workarea recovery can be provided to 100 percent of staff if desired.
- It avoids overtime expenses where staff would otherwise need to process a back-log of work after a disaster.
- No outlay is necessary for additional IT equipment for users not relocated into a recovery centre.
- It provides a simple and versatile way of allowing non-mobile employees to work from home if it becomes necessary during a disaster or the current flu pandemic.

Emergency Office is available as a dedicated or syndicated service, with the USB dongle and host services provided by ICM on a per user basis. The dedicated service is always available and users can activate their Emergency Office immediately, whether during a disaster or otherwise. Syndicated users can access the service after a four hour set up period, on the same ‘first come first served’ principle as workarea provision. The dedicated service costs circa £300 per user per year and the syndicated costs circa £75 per user per year. For both types there is also a one-off set-up fee.

For more details email info@icm-continuity.co.uk call 08448 63 00 63 or visit http://www.icm-continuity.co.uk/icm_services/emergency_office/emergency_office.asp

•Date: 17th July 2009• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: Recovery facilities
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