Office Depot Supplies Essential Disaster Planning and Recovery Advice to Businesses; New Online Resource Offers Contingency Plans That Help Small Businesses ''Weather'' Any Storm; Emphasizes Advice for Protecting Irreplaceable Assets

Business Wire, May 22, 2006

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. -- To help small businesses prepare for the active storm season that experts are predicting, Office Depot (NYSE:ODP), a leading global provider of office products and services, is launching a timely educational campaign called Disaster Preparedness: Advice You Can Depend on to Weather Any Storm. The program offers lessons learned from the Company's first-hand experience and underscores the critical need for businesses to take disaster preparedness - from natural disasters to daily threats such as a computer viruses and power outages - seriously.

And the statistics concur: Forty three percent of businesses damaged in a disaster close for good, and that figure rises to nearly 60 percent after one year, according to the Association of Small Business Development Centers.

Office Depot's Disaster Preparedness initiative features an online brochure available for download at www.officedepot.com/getprepared, as well as a free online seminar for small business owners www.officedepot.com/webcafe.> Having weathered four major hurricanes last year alone at its corporate headquarters in South Florida and across nearly 100 of the Company's Gulf State store locations, Office Depot is using its real world experience to provide businesses with practical solutions related to disaster preparation.

"A sound contingency plan can enable your small business to respond effectively to a crisis, and prevent that crisis from becoming a full-fledged disaster," said Tom Serio, Director of Global Business Continuity for Office Depot. "Office Depot knows first-hand how vital it is for businesses to prevent disruptive events that can be anticipated and reduce the impact of disruptive events that are unavoidable. Smart businesses are those that develop a strategy to protect their employees and data in the wake of a catastrophe."

"Not having a plan or back-up system in place results in shuttered businesses," said Jon Toigo, Office Depot Disaster Preparedness Advisor, an IT veteran and author of numerous books on disaster planning and recovery, including Advice You Can Depend on to Weather Any Storm. "It is time to apply pragmatism, common sense, and energy to disaster preparation."

Disaster Preparedness: Advice You Can Depend on to Weather Any Storm, (www.officedepot.com/getprepared), offers recommendations on how businesses can protect their people and data, preparation checklists and guidelines to get started, including the following:

--Employees are a company's most important resource. Focus on helping them navigate personal issues, from damaged homes to personal injury. This type of employee support will come back to the company in the form of loyalty. Serio notes that the most critical aspect of emergency planning is getting employees to think ahead.

--If you lose your data, you can lose your business. To protect your data, make a back-up and move the media to an off-site storage facility. It's a good practice to back-up key data at least every week. Make sure you use a durable format with a long archival life such as the Office Depot(R) DVD RW Rewriteable Media Spindle ($24.99 for a pack of 25) providing 4.7GB storage -- more than six times the storage capacity of a CD. If you are using a laptop, select a durable model such as the ThinkPad(R) T43 14.1" Notebook Computer ($1,499.99) that features an active protection system for the hard drive and rescue and recovery functions for data backup. Centralize, protect and secure important insurance documents, mementos and keepsakes in a security chest or file like the Sentry(R) Fire-Safe(R) Small Security Chest, 17 Lb., 0.18 Cu. Ft. ($31.99). It features a convenient carrying handle and can even be bolted down for added security.

An important part of disaster recovery planning is prevention. To help small business owners and their employees with the planning process, Office Depot is hosting a free online web seminar entitled "Disaster Planning and Recovery Strategies for Your Business." It will feature both Tom Serio, Director of Global Business Continuity for Office Depot, and Jon Toigo, Office Depot Disaster Preparedness Advisor. The web cast will be held on Tuesday, May 30, 2006 from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EDT. To register, go to www.officedepot.com/webcafe.> A critical component of disaster preparedness is to invest in the basic solutions to keep a business functioning. Simple and affordable precautions can help small business be more prepared to handle a crisis and recover their business assets.

Storage Solutions:

--Laptop with durable hardware enhancements (e.g., shock absorber)

--Portable flash memory drive

--External hard drive

--Writeable CDs and DVDs

--Surge protector with built-in and battery backup

--Waterproof and fireproof safe

--Mobile, Moisture-Resistant Folding File Cart for storage

--Camera/film or digital camera

--Scanner

Preventative Solutions

--Smoke alarm

--Fire extinguisher

--Security management software

--Systems management software

--Network management software

About Jon Toigo

Toigo, a veteran with more than 20 years of IT operations and management experience both inside corporate IT organizations and as an external consultant, architect and integrator is also a noted author of 14 books on information technology, including what some critics regard as the Bible of storage technology -- The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management (Prentice Hall PTR: 2000) -- and several editions of Disaster Recovery Planning, a practical guide to contingency planning used by organizations throughout the world. Toigo is also a prominent columnist for several online and print magazines covering IT, including SearchStorage.com, Enterprise Systems Journal online (esj.com), and Storage Networking World online, where his commentary on data storage technology and data protection is read by more than a half million subscribers monthly.