Telecommuting to tackle flu

Life Meets Work, a workplace consultancy group, is urging more companies to use telecommuting options as the possibility of the swine flu pandemic continues to grow, reports TMCnet.

“Given that companies are already stretched thin by the recession, extended employee absences won't be sustainable for long. Companies will have no choice but to look for options,” says Kyra Cavanaugh, president of Life Meets Work and flexible workplace consultant.

To stop the spread of the influenza, social distancing appears to be one solution. Telecommuting offers the double benefit of improving employee engagement and productivity while also maintaining business continuity, according to the study.

CaseCentral, provider of on-demand eDiscovery software for corporate counsel and law firms, has released the first eDiscovery business continuity planning (BCP) protocol, according to Sys-con.

The BCP protocol builds on CaseCentral's enterprise-class eDiscovery disaster recovery protocol, which was the industry's first when implemented in July 2008.

CaseCentral's BCP protocol ensures that core business processes are preserved and service to clients is maintained, avoiding a "ghost ship" scenario where systems may be up but core business processes fail.

Stratus Technologies has added business continuity, disaster recovery and administrative enhancements to its Avance high-availability software, reports eWeek.

Stratus rolled out the latest version of Avance, which the company introduced a year ago to give SMEs a highly available virtualised environment platform for their x86 systems.

The software offers several advantages over cluster environments, including greater uptime, better protection against data loss and less complexity, says Lee Kaminski, Stratus' product manager for Avance.