I am a supply chain superintendent for Sohar Aluminum in the Sultanate of Oman. We are building an Aluminum smelter here in Oman, but earlier this year we were hit by a tropical storm called "Gonu". It has done countless millions of dollars worth of damage in the country and only now are we starting to recover. Although the plant itself remained untouched all of our office space was deep in water and communication were almost impossible. All of our procurement records are held on our SAP system which thankfully survived as well as all the backups. Therefore our business continuity plan was to move to Gmail for all our overseas procurement activity. We have some 400 overseas vendors in all corners of the globe. We announced soon after the disaster struck that we would move everything to Gmail as a business continuity plan. This helped to retain our progress on the project. Being web based we had no need to worry about server access from our underwater offices. We operated like this for at least 30 days working out of the Radison hotel bedrooms all connected to Gmail and our vendors overseas. Thanks to Gmail and thanks to the mobile wireless operator - it was easy to use wherever you are in the world.
Dr. Graham R Smith, Supply Chain Superintendent
Sohar, Sultanate of Oman
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