Catching A Break

New Orleans-based SCP Pools Corp.'s IT team has spent the past three years getting its disaster-recovery planning in order, including a decision to move its data-center operations out of high-risk hurricane country. That move helped the company keep its nearly 200 branch stores across the country running last week.

"It may prove to be the best thing I ever did in directing our IT operations," says Tim Babco, senior director of IT for SCP. "We decided we needed to take disaster recovery seriously with respect to our hurricane potential. If we hadn't, we wouldn't be operating this week." A business outage would be particularly expensive at this time of year, since the wholesale provider of swimming-pool supplies and equipment does most of its business during the summer, expecting revenue of about $1.5 billion this year.

The company contracted with IT outsourcer VeriCenter Inc. for data-center space. SCP's disaster-recovery plan is triggered if a storm reaches a predesignated latitude. At 2 p.m. Aug. 26, as Katrina shifted from its original projected landfall in the Florida panhandle, company executives met. Three hours later, six IT employees were sent to Dallas. By Aug. 29, six more IT employees joined, and they set up an IT call-center in the VeriCenter facility.

--Darrell Dunn