Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Gary Lynch, Marsh’s global leader of supply chain risk management, said some companies are good at understanding the supply chain footprint, and plan to use outside suppliers if necessary.

A Silicon Valley irony, though, is that while most large hardware and software companies have very sophisticated plans in place, nobody is sure if there’s enough bandwidth to allow hundreds of thousands of workers to work remotely.

“As they look at themselves, they might be very good, but put that kind of (pandemic) load on the network, you have to ask is there enough bandwidth? Can the application servers take it, can the e-mail systems take it?” Lynch said. “Few companies have the answer.”