Last year Alan White came back from a run to discover that the digital clock in his house near Honolulu was blinking. An earthquake had hit the island. White, the CIO at Outrigger Enterprises Group, hadn't felt a thing. But the city certainly did when the electrical system suffered a 12-hour grid failure.

Outrigger, the largest local hotel operator in the state, had planned for short power failures and full-blown disasters, but the company still found itself unprepared. Its corporate office and 11 local hotels -- totaling some 7,600 rooms -- had generators and plenty of fuel; but Outrigger's vendors, especially datacom carriers, didn't have adequate fuel reserves. Three hours into the blackout, Outrigger's voice and data network failed.