Asian tsunamis leave IT industry largely undamaged

Tsunamis that killed tens of thousands and ravaged coastlines around South Asia on Sunday are unlikely to impact the region’s IT industry, which is centered away from affected areas.

The tsunamis were caused by a series of undersea earthquakes off the Western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Spreading across the Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea and the Indian Ocean, the waves — some as high as 10 meters, according to media reports — struck the coastlines of several countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Somalia.

By Wednesday morning, the estimated death toll across the region had topped 60,000, according to several reports. More than one-third of all the casualties are expected to be children, UNICEF said. In addition, millions of people in affected areas have been left without homes, it said.

In response to the disaster, aid agencies including UNICEF and The American National Red Cross were actively soliciting financial donations, by mail, telephone and on the Web to help fund relief efforts.

“This is a horrible disaster to millions of people and to the economy (of these countries) but it probably will not have a big IT impact,” said Carl Claunch, a Gartner analyst.

Most of the affected areas rely on non-IT-related industries, such as tourism and fishing, to sustain their economies, Claunch said.

However, a disaster of this type could have a significant effect on the global IT industry if it happened in certain parts of Asia, Claunch said. For example, there are significant IT manufacturing operations in coastal areas throughout Asia, particularly in Taiwan, Japan and China, which could be vulnerable to flooding of this magnitude, he said.

“This is the sort of risk every business should be considering” when preparing their disaster recovery plans, Claunch said.