A New Reality (For Now)

Over the past few days you’ve probably received emails and other messages from companies that you forgot you’d even done business with. It’s a bit like the deluge of GDPR related emails back in 2018. We don’t like invading people’s inboxes or writing blog posts that don’t add any value.

We know that everyone is worried about the current crisis – we are too.

However I think it is important that I take a couple of minutes to explain what we are doing currently and what we will be doing in the coming days, weeks and, potentially, months.

Our Staff

As of last Friday most of our staff are working from home. This isn’t entirely novel for us, as many of our staff work from home either all the time or one or two days a week. As we announced last week, however, this is the first time we’ve moved the entire company to working remotely. What had started out as a business continuity test has morphed into our new reality.

A couple of weeks ago many of us had never heard of concepts like “social distancing” or “flattening the curve”. They’re now part of our everyday lexicon. With that in mind we expect to keep our staff working from their homes until further notice.

We do have one or two staff who are “on site” in the data centre facilities that we use, as I explain below.

Our Services

As you probably know our core business is providing hosting and domain name services. Our clients come from over 130 countries around the world, although the majority are based in our native Ireland.

However you might not know that we also offer broadband and connectivity to businesses around Ireland too.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at what could be impacted if supply chains were to be disrupted. We’ve also been in regular communication with our suppliers, both of virtual services (think domains, SSL etc) as well as those who provide us with physical goods. Most of our vendors are very aware of the current situation and have plans in place.

While most of our services can be provided and managed virtually, some, however, do require physical intervention. That’s not going to change and our staff will be able to access servers when needed.

You, Our Clients

We are a service company. Without you, our clients, we would not exist.

We are very conscious that many of you have been or will be adversely impacted by the current situation. If you’re facing any financial difficulties please reach out to our finance team to see what we can do for you. We are trying to adopt a pragmatic approach with respect to services that we control end to end. However we do not have as much flexibility with services from 3rd parties.

In light of the new reality that we are all experiencing we know that many of you will be working remotely. Our communications team have been writing a series of blog posts that you may find helpful. Of course we are going to emphasise the services that we offer, but several of our staff have been “working from home” for many many years and have lots of experience they can share. One of the first of these is from Jonathan, who works for us remotely from the US.

Are you selling online or offering services that have seen an increase in usage? If so please talk to our teams. We can upgrade your services or add more resources. So reach out to your account manager and our sales team if you need to discuss your requirements.

If you need assistance our customer service teams are working as normal. Our working hours have not changed, though you might hear more background noise than usual like dogs barking, babies crying etc., Sorry about that!

So you can still choose to call us, chat with us via our live chat facility or simply email us. Your choice!

2020 is going to be a very challenging year for us all, both professionally and personally. However we also live in a time when the world is hyper-connected. We might be alone in our homes, but we can still talk to friends and family on the other side of the planet. It’s been heartening to see so many people finding the positive in the current situation – hopefully that will continue.

Here at Blacknight we are going to keep working away as normal, even if we have been forced to become a distributed company!