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IT firms based at Chennai shift their work as well as staff to other site due to flood at Chennai

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Bengaluru: As per the sources in rain-battered Chennai Indian IT and tech companies are working overtime just ensure that their client should not face any problem to continue their business.
Infosys enforced its business continuity management system, known as Phoenix, at its Chennai development centres on Tuesday to ensure safety of employees and smooth workflow. “We have created mirror images of code and data that are hosted in our other work sites. We have moved 60 people from Chennai to Bengaluru to handle mission-critical work for specific customers,” said Ramdas Kamath, EVP and head of infrastructure at Infosys.The $9 billion company has nearly 19,000 employees in its Mahindra World City and Sholinganallur campuses in Chennai.

Mind tree has development centres across locations in India and the US to mitigate location-specific disasters. “We have moved some critical applications to the cloud so that they are accessible seamlessly over the internet across any part of the globe,” said Subramanyam Putrevu, chief information officer in Mind tree. Some employees are continuing to brave the pounding rains.

“Many facilities of Cognizant in Chennai are operational and supporting critical business requirements. As part of our business continuity plans (BCPs), some employees have already traveled to Cognizant centres in other cities in order to provide uninterrupted client support. Many are staying back in our offices to attend to critical projects and we have made necessary arrangements for them,” said Cognizant.
Google Capital-backed Fresh desk had more employees turning up for work on Thursday than on Wednesday. Employees took refuge in the office as there was no food or power at their homes. The cloud-based customer support company said there was a lag in providing customer support services as the network lines were broken.
“We are surviving on diesel for the last two days. But since most IT companies in the IT park we are situated in are shut, we should have enough diesel to run for several days,” Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Fresh desk, said. The company’s data centres (cloud based servers) are all in the US and hence most data and information is safe and running.

The situation in cloud company Zoho is no different. “Some of the employees in Chennai who have power and internet access at home are handling support. Our offices in Tenkasi (TN) and Austin (US) have taken up extra loads. However, as we have fewer employees in support, the service is still slow,” the company spokesperson said. Zoho’s data centres are also in the US and Europe and the product and client-related information is on the cloud.

IBM, which has nearly a fifth of its India employees in Chennai, said it was offering alternative, safe work locations as well as accommodation for those in need. “For our clients, we are providing 24×7 services to ensure business continuity and, where necessary, recovery solutions for affected businesses,” it said.