Disaster Recovery Firms Offer Free Services Ahead of Hurricane Matthew

As Hurricane Matthew churned toward the Florida coast Thursday afternoon and residents of the southeastern United States evacuated, disaster and recovery vendors spun up emergency programs to help unprotected businesses with last-minute efforts to save their data.

Matthew was expected to make an extremely close approach along the Florida coast Thursday night as a Category 4 or even possibly a Category 5 hurricane. Although it was not expected to make landfall, Matthew's storm surge and winds could still wind up being more devastating than a more typical hurricane strike.

As the National Weather Service put it Thursday morning in its hurricane statement, "Widespread extensive to devastating wind impacts will be felt. ... Effects such as these ranging from the coast to well inland have not been experienced in central Florida in decades."

Exacerbating the problems is an overall weather pattern that is currently expected to bring the storm in a looping pattern back off the Florida coast after lashing Georgia and South Carolina, with the potential for even longer power outages due to the potentially extended battering.

Axcient Inc. and StorageCraft Technology Corp. were among vendors who announced free emergency help for companies that needed to back up data.

"In the face of Hurricane Matthew, we are offering complimentary, no-commitment disaster recovery and data protection services to businesses who could be impacted," said Axcient CEO Justin Moore in a statement. The offer to back up data to Axcient's cloud-based recovery service, Fusion, "is valid for up to 30 days or until the impacted business is stabilized, whichever is longer," he said.

StorageCraft set up an emergency URL, storagecraft.com/storms, where businesses and non-profits in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina could begin the process of backing up data for free with StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX software.

"The best way to ensure business continuity after the storm is to prepare before the storm," said Curt James, vice president of marketing and business development at StorageCraft, in a statement. "ShadowProtect SPX gives IT professionals a chance to back up, and reliably recover, their critical systems and data quickly. This will allow them to focus even more time on safeguarding their businesses and families as the storm approaches."

StorageCraft's offer gives users 15 days to back up systems and data, and those who back up data by Oct. 14 will be able to recover the data for free.

Posted by Scott Bekker on October 07, 2016