Computerworld — Data aggregation vendor QL2 Software Inc. already follows best practices to prepare for the worst. It has redundant systems and regularly reviews its plans for both disaster recovery and business continuity. But when it comes to the ongoing H1N1 pandemic, company executives admit, they were a bit worried.

To disarm their concerns, they organized and conducted a "dress rehearsal" to see how the company could handle significant staff outages and to find out what they could do better.

The goal: Ensuring that they could still operate if more than 10% of the 42 employees in its Seattle headquarters were infected with swine flu and forced to stay home.

"Some contracts with our customers require us to have certain uptime, so we decided to do this to be sure that we could react within the terms of the contracts," says Rosie Hausler, QL2's vice president of marketing. "We decided to be proactive and try a work-at-home day. We decided we should practice."

So on Sept. 24, that's what QL2 did. All 42 employees in the headquarters building had been told that they had to work from home so the firm's off-site work processes could be tested and fine-tuned in the event of a major swine flu outbreak locally.

The employees worked from home all day and dialed in for conference calls at 8 a.m., noon and at 4 p.m. with QL2's business-continuity team.

The 411

Name: QL2 Software Inc.

Headquarters: Seattle

Number of employees: About 163 worldwide, including 42 in Seattle, 113 in India and 8 in Atlanta

Founded: 2003

Business: Scours the Internet for information for each client and turns the information into databases that clients can use for analysis -- aggregating real-time fare and routing data, for instance

Client roster: More than 100 airlines, three of the top five global pharmaceutical companies and market leaders in retail, consumer products and life sciences

Any issues that arose that day were logged into a project-management and bug-tracking application called JIRA so the problems could be systematically fixed later. QL2 was already using JIRA as part of its normal IT tool arsenal and used it to help that day, Hausler says.

QL2's business focuses on the travel, hospitality and retail markets. QL2 scours the Internet for information for each client from disparate Web sites and turns the information into databases that clients can use for analysis. For companies in the airline industry, QL2 aggregates fare and route data so the airlines can compare their prices and routes with competitors, in real time.

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