EF5: Too Close for Comfort

By Josh Griffin, IT Manager

In March, I gave a Webinar on disaster preparedness. We discussed the importance of having a plan, and the fact that this plan will always require fine-tuning. If you have seen the news lately, you will recall the May 25th tornado that claimed eight lives and destroyed 200 homes in Parkersburg, IA.

Parkersburg is just 20 miles from Cedar Falls, IA where our production co-location data center is located. The very same storm touched down just seven miles from our data center, which is built to withstand an EF4 category storm. At the time of the storm, I wasn’t worried that a tornado was in Cedar Falls. The likelihood of a tornado in Iowa being stronger than an EF4 is rare – the last EF5 that came through Iowa was in 1976. So my data center is safe right?

Google, PHRs, and Leading by Example

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & Corporate Evangelist

I learned of the public launch of Google Health last week from the blog of John Sharp of Cleveland Clinic.  Google Health appears, for the most part, to be a run of the mill Personal Health Record (PHR) with conditions, allergies, medications and the like.  There is some typical Google flair in the presentation, but also a lot of awkwardness that needs to be addressed in other versions.

Perhaps the most exciting component currently is the connection to Cleveland Clinic’s Epic MyChart portal (and apparently a few others).