VPN stands up to Frances

BellSouth may have discovered a new marketing strategy for selling virtual private network services. The company is now trading on the flexibility of its VPN service to tout the success of a Florida business, building supplies retailer Sy’s Supplies, in weathering the aftermath of Hurricane Frances this fall.

Juli Swanson, office manager of Sy’s, said the company’s West Palm Beach headquarters was devastated by Hurricane Frances, forcing the company to face the prospect of selling supplies and tracking prices the old-fashioned way – by hand.

“At our main location, we are making 300 to 400 sales a day, and that would be an awful lot of hand-written invoices,” she said.

Because both Sy’s telephone service and its T-1 links remained functional, however, the company was able to plug servers into a power generator and maintain business as usual, handling purchase orders, point-of-sale verification and all accounting tasks in the normal way. And when physical damage done to its office building forced Sy’s to move temporarily into an adjacent warehouse, the company was able to borrow a DSL line and continue using its VPN service.

“The VPN service was very critical to us staying in business,” said Swanson. “Without having the VPN up, we would have been in real trouble. This way, we were able to focus on our business.”

Because Sy’s sells construction supplies, including badly needed items such as generators and commercial cleaning tools, that business was essential to many people.

In addition to the makeshift office set-up, Sy’s was able to allow many employees, including a woman responsible for its banking and accounting, to work from home.

If Sy’s had been using a frame relay circuit or other fixed-line offering, the off-site flexibility would not have been possible, said BellSouth spokesman.

“Most customers don’t approach network VPN as a business continuity tool, but it provides a lot more flexibility in situations like this,” he said.