Hurricane Sandy: Providers Offer Help to Impacted Businesses

Less than a week after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast, leaving thousands still homeless and businesses struggling to return to normal operation, distributor Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) and Intermedia, an SMB cloud service provider, are offering a much-need helping hand to channel partners in the distressed areas: a free month of email and, if needed, a cloud server solution for their downed online customers, all with no strings attached.

Ingram’s cloud services team sent the letter below to channel partners in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast United States. Please take note:

Dear Partners,

We hope this note finds you safe and sound, and that Hurricane Sandy has not caused severe challenges for you, your family, and your business. If for any reason you, or your customers are having difficulty communicating and getting back online, we’d like to offer you a couple solutions that may help.

In conjunction with our cloud-based communications partner Intermedia, we’re giving all Ingram Micro partners in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions of the United States access to one month of free email service to help get business moving again. Additionally, if you have clients that have critical applications that need to be brought online immediately, we have a Cloud Server solution that may also be of use.

If either of these would help you or your customers, please click here and we’ll get moving. The registration will take just a few minutes and it’s completely free – no strings attached.

If you have any questions, please contact us by phone if possible at: (800) 705-7057, option 3 or by email: [email protected]

We’re here to help so please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Thank you,
Your Ingram Micro Cloud Services Team

In addition to Ingram and Intermedia, many other thousands of hands have reached out and continue to do so to assist businesses crippled in Sandy’s wake. Exigent Technologies, a solution provider headquartered in New Jersey and Manhattan, has been helping to relocate flooded customers by migrating them to a data center in Morris County, N.J.

Here’s a letter Exigent has sent to its customers in the affected areas:

November 2, 2012

As the Hurricane Sandy cleanup begins and damages are assessed around the tri-state area, our helpdesk remains operational and our service team is actively assisting customers. Call volume and support activity were very high yesterday and we would expect that trend to continue into the weekend.

Many of our customers who are still without power and/or Internet connectivity have asked us for options or alternative means to bringing their IT infrastructure back online. To that end, we have worked with our datacenter partner to secure a generous amount of space and resources in a world-class, industry certified datacenter facility in Morris County, NJ.

Other customers have inquired about temporary workspace for their employees, equipped with desks, phones and computers. To assist in this regard, we have compiled some resources that are available to you upon request.

Finally, for the customers that simply would like the ability to send and receive email while their email server is down, our RestorEmail service is available and has been helping many this past week.

If you would like to speak to someone regarding the possible relocation of a portion of, or your entire IT infrastructure to our private cloud environment or, if you need temporary workspace for your employees or simply the ability to send and receive email until your email server is back up, please contact your account manager or call our helpdesk at (973) 770-0500 (option 3).

Daniel J. Haurey

President

And, there’s more. SysIntegrators, an Armonk, N.Y.-based IT solution provider with technicians in Sandy-effected areas in New Jersey, the Bronx and Queens, is offering free email service and virtual machine hosting—through its sister company scoCloud.com–in addition to disaster recovery for businesses caught in Sandy’s onslaught.

“We have capacity in our data centers to help people free of charge,” said Deepak Thadani, SysIntegrators president, whose own neighborhood still lacks power.

“Through our email servers, people without power have been able to get in touch with their families and business associates,” he said. “Some customers in lower Manhattan are flooded or without power and no disaster recovery in place. Our technicians grabbed their equipment and physically racked and stacked it in our facility. Also, we’ve opened our conference room to people to help them with business meetings, internet access and checking emails.”

“A lot of people are worse off than we are,” said Thadani. “We’re just trying to help the best way we can with IT support.”

It’s these kinds of gestures that make all the difference to help individuals, families, businesses and communities recover from Sandy’s devastation.