Alphastaff Inc., a payroll-processing firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., learned from an extended outage in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma last year that its disaster recovery plan -- which was based on systems being down for two days -- needed to take longer disruptions into account.

"We figured, we're down for a couple of days, no big deal," said Jack Rahner, Alphastaff's director of IT. "When you're down for 12 days, it becomes a big deal. Ancillary services become not so ancillary."

For example, the company hadn't replicated its Great Plains accounting software, and state income and property taxes came due. This year, Alphastaff is adding more capabilities to its collocation facility in Atlanta and is installing additional equipment and applications there, including its accounting software.

Alphastaff also discovered "that not having a mail server was a huge hindrance" to continued operations, Rahner said. Although a mail server at the company's Atlanta facility remained up and running after Wilma, end users had trouble accessing it, he added. In an effort to avoid similar problems this year, Alphastaff has started using MessageOne Inc.'s e-mail management and continuity services.

Although Savannah, Ga., hasn't been hit by a major hurricane in more than a century, Katrina prompted the city's Memorial Health University Medical Center to step up its disaster recovery efforts. The medical center is setting up capabilities for replicating its electronic X-ray and patient records data to a data center in Atlanta, said Chris Leggett, Memorial Health's manager of technical services. She added that the replication process should begin within six weeks.