Last week, I missed posting my Friday blog. I was working on a response to a proposal for a large multi-national enterprise. It was different from most RFPs we receive, in that pricing and traffic were not the primary concern. Instead, the primary concern was business continuity or survivability.

Broadvox has noted its capability to support business continuity for a number of circumstances. If the client has multiple IP PBXs, then we are able to design the SIP Trunks to load balance traffic, failover to the functioning IP PBX, home them off different network elements, attach them to different network rings, and provide broadband connectivity from separate and distinct backbones. Normally, those answers would resolve questions related to business continuity.

However, this case other questions were posed. A catastrophic failure was the ultimate point of the RFP. And, it was here where I realized that Broadvox had not addressed true disaster recovery in prior responses. How should a carrier respond when the customer cannot access his offices but communications must be available even if in a degraded fashion?

The solution requires hardware that is not at the customer premise, providing network access to non-IP capable phones from anywhere at any time, and making the necessary account changes quickly to provide an alternative service.

Although, Broadvox had not answered the question before, it was interesting to see that we do have the physical facilities, network infrastructure and support personnel to provide for full disaster recovery. We may not win the RFP but I know we will not lose because of issues regarding survivability.