How technology helps firms beat weather

Snowstorms, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions. When extreme weather strikes it can have a disastrous effect on business.

Weather-induced chaos disrupts transport and infrastructure resulting in lost productivity - costing global businesses billions of dollars.

But these scenarios have as well presented an ideal possibility for technologists to remind businesses that there are however the means to lessen the impact of bad weather.

"Businesses are incredibly impacted by weather events and if we look at 2009 there was more than $50 bn of losses in the insurance industry alone," says Dr Matt Huddleston, Principal Consultant at the UK's Met Office.

"Vast amount of resources are lost because of bad weather so weather innovation is hugely important to businesses because every single business, every location on the planet is exposed to the weather. By developing weather innovation it enables businesses to manage their risks."

Weather forecasting is however big business. Meteorological data is collected from robotic buoys in the ocean, from ships, from satellite views and from thousands of volunteer climate observers.

But how important is a high-tech weather service to help businesses manage the impact of the weather and offset potential risks?

The leading edge

"FedEx has one of the leading edge, one of the best weather research centres of any airline and it actually does give us an advantage to make sure we can plan and have one of the most robust delivery systems in the business," says William Martin, managing director of the firm's UK operations.

"However they can as well see immediate risks to the business and they can make necessary adjustments without warning, like diverting flights and things of the same type."

Gritit is firm whose business is based around weather - gritting roads and car parks for customers ranging from hospitals and the police to offices and retail parks when temperatures plunge.

Managing director Alastair Knight, says the firm is nevertheless leading the way in winter risk management having switched to the relatively new innovation offered by cloud computing.

When a firm uses cloud computing it does not build all IT infrastructure by itself - instead renting storage, computing power or software services from other companies. The services are accessed via the internet, which in network diagrams is shown as a cloud, hence the name.

"With more than 80,000 jobs already delivered this season in less than two months, there is no way that a system that wasn't using a system akin to cloud computing would be able to cope," says Mr Knight.

Cloud computing is not only helping businesses like Gritit. Commuters who find themselves stuck at home because of travel disruption brought on by the weather are taking advantage of the innovation too.

Simple internet connection

With a simple internet connection, Mr Fletcher stayed in contact with other colleagues via Google's video chat and as well worked on content in real-time using the iPad and Android Device afterwards being snowed in.

The global market for cloud computing research will be worth more than $30bn in the straightway four years, according to a new report from Gartner, a research research house.

And according Outsourcery, a specialist in providing such services for businesses, eradicating the need to go to an office means that work is "no longer somewhere you go however something you do".

Whether your internet goes down or if your internet service provider has a problem, at the time you lose access to your data as so then"

"The fantastic thing about cloud computing is that people typically are struggling to office to connect to business information and colleagues nevertheless with the cloud in other words maintained by you by a third party in their date centre and you can connect to it anywhere in the world," says the firm's join chief executive, Piers Linney.

Outsourcery's intranet is designed so that staff, wherever they are, have access to video calls from either their computer or phones, with "virtual" meetings to stay in touch too.

"If you lose access to the internet - whether your internet goes down or if your internet service provider has a problem, at the time you lose access to your data as then," he says.

"With free services, there is often no support for when things go wrong, and that can significantly impact your business if you cut corners on your budget."

The new security challenges cloud computing brings

But in spite of the new security challenges cloud computing brings, technologists may have a strong case to argue that cloud does lessen some of the impact bad weather has on business - forecasting a bright, sunny future.