The company's operations are managed through a state-of-the-art data warehousing facility, which is the third of its kind in the world. "A secure backup of this facility is maintained in an alternate location allowing us to keep this system online 24/7," continues Atif.

Keeping in view the sensitive data managed by the company, adequate backup facilities and business continuity measures have always been the key to LMKR's uninterrupted service delivery model. The catastrophe hit LMKR's main offshore center in Islamabad which has a workforce of over 400.

In the backdrop of such a scenario, critical business operations and core ICT infrastructure need to be restored without delay. Being an ISO- and CMMi-certified organization, LMKR periodically carries out disaster recovery drills to deal with unexpected events and calamities. The company's comprehensive business continuity plan ensures pre-emptive measures and practices that ensure minimum downtime and little or no interruption in the continuity of services.

Atif and Shabana, the husband-wife team that runs LMKR, were concerned about how their team members would cope with the situation. Atif Khan, CEO of LMKR says, "Our facility is such that there is always someone working in the office at the ETC. That was perhaps our biggest worry and thankfully, our team was not present at the time." The 60,000 square foot office that the company had was completely shattered in the blast.

As part of its business continuity plan, LMKR has a number of business continuity centers and backup facilities in various geographical regions out of which 2 are based in Islamabad. All vital services and data were migrated to alternate locations and critical operations were recommenced from these secondary facilities. The core disaster recovery team was quick to respond to the situation and had core business activities and supporting services functional in a record 41 hours.