ITO in Chennai: Balancing (US) client requirements and (India) employees

Is your ITO helpdesk / Network and App/Dev team’s answering? Chances are slower than normal but hopefully Disaster Recovery planning/investment is paying off…
During the past several weeks, continued rain fall (near cyclone levels) in Chennai has forced local/home evacuations, transportation mayhem, and relocation of employees to keep IT Outsourcing afloat.  But the numbers are no joking matter, with counts over 400,000 displaced, 70,000 rescued and 122 died, and costing $1 Billion of damages.  Floodlist.com for details and pictures  Life will forever be affected, and we'll soon know what it may have cost organizations (for outage and interruption of services and perhaps business relationships).

Can you spell contingency plans (DRP/BCP) during these challenging times?
With approx. 15% or 3 Million IT workforce in Chennai, many US companies are resorting to back up location in India for companies including Cognizant, Infosys, and other “India's top IT firms — Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL Technologies — said they swiftly engaged their contingency measures as the weather in Chennai deteriorated.” according to businessinsider.in:

• US-based Cognizant, which has a significant number of its 219,000 employees in Chennai, said it moved several employees to other centres within the city as well as to other cities and asked some to work from home to provide support to clients
• TCS, the country's largest software exporter that has more than 65,000 employees in Chennai, managed operations and client interactions without having to move people but gave employees the option to work from home or from offices near them
• India's third-largest IT firm, Wipro, gave its 18,000 employees in Chennai the option of working from home for most of last week

So, when it comes to Outsourcing, what considerations have been accounted for, tested and successfully executed:

• Proximity of physical location and availability of works
• Alternate means of transportation
• Vetted outsourcing employees
• Hard copy in addition to soft copies of disaster recovery procedures/contacts
• Tested procedures and systems e.g hot standby of equipment/terminals/systems/networking gear
• Communication and notification plan for recovery and service delivery
• Sustained protection for commingling of dedicated personal, sensitive data, facility/room and persistent desktop configuration

Weather forecast for this week continues to be 80-100% thunderstorms.  Be safe all!