Y2-Flu?

Software scammers take note: your next opportunity is coming in on a wing and a prayer. Avian flu headlines are moving from the health care section of the paper to the business and political pages, and that means that the technology press will be the next to be hit with articles about the meaning of the coming pandemic to IT managers and users, software vendors, and the like. Soon to follow will be Avian flu mitigation articles about what to do in your IT shop when the pandemic strikes, and how to keep your business running with this handy-dandy software/service/appliance that revolutionizes the new category of enterprise pandemic management (EPM, if you must).

If you think that's cynical, you're right. Y2K was a scammer's delight, and pandemic-panic looks like the next candidate for hustling the unwary with the unnecessary. So, here's a quick piece of advice: if you're worried about Avian flu taking down your business, you're probably wasting your time, or have much too much time on your hands for idle conjecture, or some combination of the two. The biggest threat to your business is still competition and incompetence, and you would do wisely to focus on those very real threats instead of spinning off into fantasy land about the "disaster-du-jour." For goodness sake don't think of this as a special-case IT problem that needs special solutions, because it isn't and it doesn't. And bear in mind that, like Y2K, we are way too suspectible in our "fear-driven" society to expect the worst-case where there is no case at all. Finally, don't kid yourself about what a pandemic means: if there's ever a real Avian flu pandemic, keeping IT flying will be the last of your worries.