Several IT managers interviewed last week about the state of IT operations in New Orleans agreed that the first action in a disaster should be to check in with employees, because nothing happens without them.

Lawson said in an interview that Tulane quickly created an employee registration process after Katrina hit because "we cared about our employees -- we wanted to know where they were, and were they safe."

Rick Omartian, IT chief financial officer and chief of staff at The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America in New York, said that the most important asset of any organization is its workers, whose safety should be management's top priority.

"The business will quickly collapse without its people, even if the company deploys the most advanced technology, alternative workspace plans and disaster recovery data centers," Omartian said.

The law firm of Adams and Reese LLP, which had offices and a data center in New Orleans, created a disaster relief fund of $200,000 to assist affected employees, said CIO David Erwin.