Broadwing CEO Discusses Implications of 9-11 Tragedy For Industry

📅 October 10, 2001 - Rick Ellenberger, president and CEO of integrated communications provider Broadwing Inc. (broadwing.com), discussed theeconomic and industry impact of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks in New Yorkand Washington, DC, during remarks delivered at The Economic StrategyInstitute's Global Forum last week.

"It is evident that the US business landscape has been forever altered bythe tragic events of Sept. 11th," said Ellenberger. "The concerns ofcompanies surrounding disaster recovery, business continuity, and employeesecurity will drive many of their technology decisions for at least the nextsix to twelve months."
During Q&A with the audience of global business leaders, administrationofficials, and economic policy experts, Ellenberger discussed three businessconsiderations that enterprise and government leaders should take to reducecommunications disruption from either natural or man made disasters:distributed work arrangements, heightened cyber-security, and networkredundancy.
"After the tragic events of Sept. 11th, many companies will move to a moredistributed work model, placing critical business functionality in severalgeographically dispersed locations, relying on work-at-home,teleconferencing, and data networking applications to link their operationsseamlessly for their customers," said Ellenberger.
"Recent disruptions caused by the Code Red and Nimda viruses are causingcompanies to look for increased ways of both protecting the operations oftheir networks as well as the integrity of their data. However, economicrealities still exist around issues of capital and headcount. Thereforemany companies will use the intelligence of all-optical networks to createsecurity barriers like firewalls and virus filters that are resident in thenetwork, remotely managed, and provide consistent, updated protection to allof a customer's locations and applications," Ellenberger continued.
"Finally, single carrier networks and access paths into critical facilitieswill give way to carrier diversity and multiple entrance models. Goingforward, companies will reexamine their business continuity posture anddisaster recovery plans with a greater focus on communications availabilityduring times of enormous capacity demand," Ellenberger explained.