HYDERABAD: With IT companies in Bengaluru facing the brunt of the recent unrest , Hyderabad’s IT sector once again rose to the occasion, with techies working between 12 to 36 hours at a stretch to keep critical services and servers there running.At least 70 to 85 per cent of IT companies in Bengaluru have been severely hit by the current crisis over sharing of Cauvery water between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu Speaking about the fallout , Rajendar C, secretary, Kannada Rashtra Telangana Association, said, “At least 25,000 or more techies from Hyderabad have currently stepped in for their Bengaluru counterparts. Going by the situation here in Bengaluru, they might have to continue to do so for a couple of days.”Nearly two-thirds of the 90,000 techies in Bengaluru handling critical services have been unable to work due to clashes.Many workers in Hyderabad slept in office on Monday night and were planning to sleep in on Tuesday night too to keep up the business continuity plan (BCP) as their Bengaluru counterparts were forced to stay away from work.“I slept on my desk after work ended past midnight as our Bangalore office came to a virtual standstill. I will not be able to go home today too as my role in BCP functioning is indispensable. Although I am being offered a compensatory off, I will not be able to take it for the next few days. In fact, our seven-member team will be on the job till the situation in Bengaluru improves and then we will take offs,” said technical architect from an IT major, Ravinder A on Tuesday.“Since we are a service company, it is important to meet deadlines and answer our customers especially in case of projects that are spread across both locations. Over 100 employees from our office have been clocking in five or more hours since Monday,” said Pallavi Sowoji, human resource manager of an IT company.While their work is being offloaded to various centres, Hyderabad has taken the maximum load compared to other cities such as Pune, Delhi NCR and Chennai. While Bengaluru is the country’s biggest IT centre, Hyderabad is the country’s strongest ‘anti-disaster’ centre with a majority of IT giants hosting their secondary servers in the city to handle such emergency situations. The city is also the third largest IT hub, after Bengaluru and Chennai.“Companies are wary of shedding the load off to Chennai, anticipating clashes in Chennai too and hence most of the load is being taken by Hyderabad. By Monday afternoon we got to know that services in Bengaluru will be shut down and additional calls will be routed to Hyderabad. Our entire team worked for 12 hours or more. We started early today too just to make sure that additional work is wrapped up in time,” said Ashwin Chandra, critical services manager at an IT company.In fact, when Chennai was reeling under massive floods too, techies from the Hyderabad, especially those working for critical services, had clocked in a number of extra hours.“The reason why most of the work is off-loaded to Hyderabad during such times of crisis is that at least 70 per cent of IT companies host their secondary disaster recovery centres and servers in Hyderabad. Apart from seismological reports, climatic conditions, connectivity parameters and availability of man-power are key considerations for selecting Hyderabad as a DR centre,” explained Sundeep Kumar Makthala, founder Telangana IT association.