A business continuity plan saved assets and people in Ukraine

Sigma Software evacuated thousands of people (and pets)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, exactly one year ago, uprooted and destroyed lives, families and businesses. Despite that, some Ukrainian firms have managed to not only survive, but thrive.

Sigma Software was headquarted in Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, before the invasion, where it employed more than 700 people. Today, the city has been bombed repeatedly and although invading forces have been pushed back, it remains under intermittent fire.

While Sigma's headquarters are in Kharkiv it has a complex distributed structure, which includes a VC fund, business incubator, university presence and R&D centres. That made saving the business more complicated than a simple relocation.

A robust business continuity plan (BCP) enabled the team to resume operations in early March, just two weeks after the invasion began.

"In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and started a war in the East of Ukraine, as a part of our BCP we started relocating our infrastructure into a datacentre in the Netherlands and migrating some of the resources to the cloud, says Evgeniy Bachinskiy, head of compliance at Sigma.

"We ensured our IT infrastructure was resilient enough and did not depend on physical availability of either of our offices."

Because the BCP document included regular risk assessments, the company spotted signs of tension between Russia and Ukraine in November 2021. It then revisited the plan to prioritise the safety and support of its people; dealing with temporary interruptions; and customer concerns.

"Before the full-scale invasion in early 2022, we had been testing our BCP protocols. We transferred all of the spare equipment from the office in Kharkiv to Lviv, which we considered safe. It accelerated and simplified the process of evacuation significantly. It turned out to be really helpful after the invasion as well, since there was a shortage of computer spares supply on the market."

Although the outbreak of war still came as a shock, the BCP team - about 20 people - arranged evacuation buses and accommodation for people in transit.

In a few days the team organised overnight stays for 800 colleagues and their pets - 120 cats, dogs, hamsters, and other animals. The efforts continued to grow as word spread, and Sigma ended up helping more than 2,800 people - while remaining operational from a business standpoint.

"As a part of our preparation, we ensured geographical distribution of our IT team by setting up regular business trips from Kharkiv to Lviv. That way at least 50% of the team were available to ensure continued operations while the other half of the team was being evacuated."

Evacuation to safe areas in Western Ukraine ran 24/7. More than 70% of staff returned to work within a week, and 94% within a month.

Sigma had expected the war and evacuation to "scare away" some clients, but "quite the opposite" happened instead.

"They supported us and appreciated our agility, even during the war. The tremendous dedication of our people helped us to deliver and release projects as scheduled even during the hardest first weeks of the war.

"We've guaranteed the availability of the team itself, not just the infrastructure, meaning that our company would be operational even if Ukraine had been completely cut off from power."

Sigma transformed both its infrastructure and security status in a way that made it practically independent of various local risks. That was because the firm used its BCP and reviewed risks in advance, considered worst-case scenarios and tried to both predict events and adapt to realities.

"Our business continuity plan and the team behind it worked perfectly," says Bachinskiy.