Operations have returned to normal at IT outsourcer Keane Inc., where on Sunday night Hurricane Juan ripped part of the roof off the building housing the company's Halifax, Nova Scotia, facility.

"We had a business-continuity plan that went into effect as soon as we realized how bad things were," says Alaisdar Graham, managing director of Keane Canada's Advanced Development Center, which provides application-development services for a number of Fortune 500 companies. Under the plan, Keane workers identified as "core" were placed on standby prior to the arrival of the Category 1 storm, which raked the Nova Scotia capital with winds in excess of 100 mph just after midnight Sunday. With torrents of rain cascading through the office tower's exposed roof, the staffers monitored systems through home operations and used cell phones to communicate with each other. "Though we did have one person who actually made it in," Graham says.

The raging storm knocked out power in the building for a brief period, meaning that staffers who arrived the next day had to reboot most of the facility's computer systems. "We were lucky it hit at night, otherwise our operations would have been disrupted a lot more than they were," says Graham. Hurricane Juan claimed seven lives in Canada's Maritime region and left much of Nova Scotia without power for three days.