Its data center is operating at "level 3," the highest state of readiness, which includes making sure all the required maintenance has been conducted as well as topping off generator fuel supplies, said Walter Dearing, vice president of recovery services, customer resource and support.

Third party suppliers have been put on "high alert" and will be expected to meet service level agreements during the storm, Dearing said. "This is our business so we try to prepare for all circumstances."

The SunGard facilities have quiet rooms, food; also plans for catered food and even nearby hotel room have been booked. The storm has closed major highways, bridges and tunnels because of travel hazards. "We don't want our employees being at risk," Dearing said.

Some customers of Hosting.com, which runs six data centers nationally, and who subscribes to fail over service have failed over to another data center as a precaution, said Arena. They were updating operational status @HDCOps. Dinner tonight at Hosting.com is hot dogs, burgers, baked beans, cold cuts, and junk food. "Comfort food for everybody that's here," Arena said.

Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .