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Stayin' Alive - How to Avoid the Onsite Cloud Disaster!
We’re a cloud-based industry, that’s for sure!
There’s a lot of statistics and reports out there pointing out that anywhere from 75% to 95% of the event industry now operates in the cloud.
It’s a given that there’s a huge upside to operating in the cloud – the real time and collaborative nature of the cloud allows technology platforms to provide services and functionality that were unheard of just a few years ago.
But what happens if you have opened onsite registration at your biggest event of the year and you experience an Internet slow down or outage? It’s not like you can close the doors for a few hours!
Like any new industry, smart event planners are figuring out how to take care of business and plan for the unexpected.
One useful trick is bringing in your own router equipped with a 3G/4G sim card installed. Use it as the main access point between the venue’s Internet connection and your onsite systems. Hopefully nothing disastrous ever happens, but if there was an outage, your router will automatically switch to the mobile data service via your sim card.
That way, badges can be printed, attendees can still check in and you can still run reports and take care of business.
Looking at it from a technology perspective, what are software companies doing to solve this challenge?
One publisher, Centium Software, has created an innovative defense against the unexpected outage. Centium Software publishes EventsAIR, a comprehensive event management platform that includes a suite of tools and services that include ways to recover from unexpected Internet outages.
The company was the first in the industry to address the challenge of losing Internet connectivity by publishing the Continuity Server, a powerful service that maintains an offline version of EventsAIR that is fully synchronized with the cloud.
Centium Software CEO Trevor Gardiner talked about the inspiration for the Continuity Server.
“We designed the Continuity Server to protect our clients if the unforeseen occurs and Internet connectivity either is lost or slows to an unacceptable level” Mr. Gardiner said. “When connectivity is restored, the Continuity Server switches EventsAIR back to the cloud and synchronizes all offline data at the same time.”
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