Tech Sector Chips In With Hurricane Relief

by Alex Woodie

As the world watched the horror show that was New Orleans unfold in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last week, high technology developers stepped up to help the victims. Microsoft, normally the subject of this newsletter, made a donation in the form of .NET programmers who quickly put together a Web site to help people locate their loved ones who have gone missing. Meanwhile, IBM and Intel have also donated millions and contributed IT equipment and services.

Business as usual stops when a catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina's magnitude hits. We saw this with 9/11, and we saw it again last week along the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans, where flood walls failed, inundating the city. Even for those who were not directly affected by the hurricane, citizens and businesses from all over the world took a timeout from their everyday concerns to help those in need.

That help has taken many different forms, including cash donations, manual labor, providing temporary housing, and even shipments of food and water. As of last Friday, people around the world had donated $220 million to help those whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Hopefully, the continued success of the relief effort now underway will overshadow any initial shortcomings in dealing with this unprecedented disaster.

Some of the biggest contributors to the relief effort have been purveyors of high technology. These companies, which have made billions over the past few years, have made their share of cash contributions, but they've also helped out in other ways. IBM, the $90-billion-a-year behemoth of the IT industry, has stepped up by giving 100 ThinkPad notebooks to relief workers at LSU. IBM, which, along with SunGard, runs one of the country's largest disaster recovery services businesses, also is helping the American Red Cross by making sure its Web site continues to function and accepts cash donations. IBM also donated 15 KidSmart early learning centers to the refugee center in Houston. Overall, IBM values its donations at $1 million.

Hewlett-Packard, the only other IT vendor that comes close to IBM's size with annual revenues around $80 billion, has made a $1 million cash donation, and pledges to match dollar-for-dollar every donation by its employees, up to an additional $1 million. Sun Microsystems expects its cash contributions and employee matching program for Katrina to exceed the $1.2 million it raised earlier this year for tsunami relief, while Dell and Cisco both expect their cash contributions and matching funds to exceed $2 million each.

Intel has stepped up with a $1 million check, and has also given the American Red Cross 1,500 laptops and 150 wireless access points to deploy in shelters. Intel is also working with its networking partners to bring wireless Internet service to New Orleans, and has donated 50 Tropos 802.11 Wi-Fi mesh transmitters for the New Orleans Airport and around downtown New Orleans. Oracle hasn't publicly disclosed any cash donations, but will match its employees donations. Other IT vendors making contributions include BMC Software, EDS, EMC, Lexmark, and Motorola.

Microsoft, whose astronomical profits over the past decade have made chairman Bill Gates the richest man in the world (and simultaneously the most charitable, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), has also been generous with its time and money, with Hurricane Katrina and previous disasters. Last week the company announced it has donated $1 million to various agencies in support of the relief effort, while the Gates Foundation has made $1.5 million in donations.

Microsoft's donated programming services resulted in an application and a Web site that is helping to reunite hurricane and flood victims with their loved ones. KatrinaSafe blends a client-side application used to input data about evacuated victims in the field, a SQL Server-based database of victims' names, addresses, and phone numbers that concerned friends and families can query, and a Microsoft Speech Server-powered notification system that will place a telephone call or send an e-mail to notify the searcher that the person they're looking for has been found.

The software is based on Microsoft's .NET Framework version 1.1, and makes use of Web services standards, such as simple object access protocol (SOAP) to enable interoperability with other applications. This is important because a slew of Web sites have popped up in the past week dedicated to reuniting Katrina survivors with their families.

Microsoft developers from all over the country might have lost a little bit of sleep developing the Web site, but it's paying off. Since the site went online Sunday night, the KatrinaSafe site has listed about 5,500 evacuees, and has performed about 350 queries.