Pretty much everyone knows of someone who was affected by the vast plume that grounded those magnificent men (and women) in their flying machines, including us at Lumison, who were due to attend the Datacentres Awards Ceremony Europe in Nice this month (now pushed back to June – costing the organisers a fortune to reschedule).

So, what have we all learnt from the volcano? Are we any the wiser in predicting volcanic activities? Did the government's COBRA committee overreact? And how do you pronounce Eyjafjallajokull?

But anecdotes and semantic questions aside, there is a very real question that needs to be asked here about preparing businesses for worst-case scenarios. Few are the industries that don't have critical information piped through to warehouses stored in high security centres – be they financial services, health centres, online retailers or government departments.

Companies need to ask what would happen to their data in the event of a natural disaster.

Not wishing to kick a country when it's down, but Iceland's attempts to pitch itself as an ideal datacentre location, due to its cool temperature and access to green geothermal energy, should perhaps face closer scrutiny – alongside other locations prone to the vagaries of so-called 'Acts of God'. This event highlights the risks of putting critical IT in locations on geological fault lines such as California and countries spread across the Pacific Rim.

Thankfully for Lumison and our customers, Edinburgh and London face no such complications, another example of why we shouldn't grumble too much about the unique British climate.