The outages also delivered a wake-up call about the firm's vulnerable PBX voice system. The Lucent PBX failed in both the fire and the T1 outage, leaving the company without any voice service. The IT team is now looking into voice over IP. Martinez favors a more portable voice solution that doesn't depend on a particular site or hardwired line in the event of a disaster. "If we had VoIP, we could've had voice back up and running elsewhere" immediately after the fire, Martinez says.
Anthony Martinez: 41, senior vice president and head of BrokerageAmerica's trading operations
Martinez spent 3 1/2 years overseeing all IT operations for BrokerageAmerica (he has since left the firm).
Most bizarre IT inquiry: After the fire, we had no electricity or data lines, and the CEO asked why his e-mail didn't work. This was before everything was moved off-site.
Biggest annoyance with collocation: We usually depend on remote access. I can't just have someone walk down the hall to check something out.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
