The ability of an organization - business, government,not-for-profit - to respond quickly to events that can rapidly
spiral into critical business issues can be the difference
between keeping a company's doors open and shutting them up –
perhaps permanently.
When a disaster strikes, be it the collapse of some or all of
the electricity grid or the emergence of an exotic bug like
SARS, a company that can quickly respond to events that none of
us can fully anticipate can make all the difference between a
business `disaster' with long-term, lasting consequences and a
short-term glitch that affects a company's bottom-line, but
doesn't necessarily erase it. Securing and setting up computer
hardware and software networks to replace existing networks that
become unavailable in the event disaster strikes is one, if not
the key issue.
A summary report on the current state of "disaster
preparedness" recently released by Forrester Research
(www.forrester.com) in collaboration with the Disaster Recovery
Journal (www.drj.com), underscores how unprepared most companies
are for the inevitable (albeit unpredictable) man-made or
natural disaster that will disrupt their business and
potentially cripple it – perhaps permanently.
Amongst an admittedly non-random sample of business executives
– respondents to the Forrester/DRJ survey were "decision-makers
or influencers in regards to planning and purchasing technology
and services related to disaster recovery", who actively read
and participate in business continuity and disaster preparedness
forums (in other words, informed industry insiders) – the
Forrester/DRJ shows that overall spending on disaster recovery
preparedness is low. Moreover, even for the companies these
industry insiders represent - companies that typically have
emergency backup plans - survey data indicates that only 1/3 of
these informed companies regularly test their emergency plans.
Industry best-practice recommends at least two full tests a
year.
The author once worked as a lawyer providing employment and
labor management advice to corporate clients, both large and
small. Two scenarios I witnessed come to mind. The first is when
I was a young articling student in my firm's labor department. A
senior lawyer stuck his head into my office late on a Tuesday
afternoon and in a fairly stressed voice told me to quickly pull
up anything that the local Occupational Health and Safety
Regulations said about exposure to asbestos in the workplace. A
contractor had been doing renovations at our client's premises
when a wall collapsed sending up a cloud of `friable asbestos
fiber" – a term, I was to find out, that means asbestos dust –
into the client's offices. Our initial reaction had been correct
according to the health and safety regulations. Get everyone out
of there and secure the site. The client's site was down for
almost two weeks.
The second scenario was when businesses in the Toronto-area
were shut down or curtailed operations dramatically for two
weeks when the arrival of the SARS virus raised alarm bells with
health authorities, hospitals and the media. Suddenly, I was our
firm's go-to-guy for employers, trolling the Chief Medical
Officer of Health's website, media resources, advisories and
dishing out advice to clients on how to isolate and prevent the
possible spread of an undetectable threat. We were all making
it up as we went along . . . real seat-of-the-pants stuff . . .
and the advice was predictably the same – "Don't come to the
main site if you can at all avoid it. Do business off-site."
Everyone was unprepared, then. Savvy management teams –
government and commercial – have been playing catch-up ever
since, preparing for when, not if, a similar yet unpredictable
scenario dictates that it is not `business as usual'.
Forrester/DJ's statistics, based on their survey respondents'
last five years of operations, indicate that "28% percent of
companies are likely to `declare disaster and failover to their
alternate site in a five-year time period." This does not
include scenarios where there are disruptions of operations at a
company's main site but not wholesale disasters where entire
business operations have to be moved off-site to an alternate
building or campus.
The key to a successful disaster recovery, or `DR' strategy,
therefore, is to be able to get people, hardware and data
resources quickly and efficiently up and running at a separate
geographic location. Forrester/DRJ notes that, "There is no
`rule of thumb' when it comes to the appropriate distance
between your data center and your recovery site." Spatial
separation is good and necessary, but ensuring that the hardware
and software components that your people require can be quickly
and efficiently assembled and configured for employees and
management to operate off-site can be a challenge.
The largest corporations have dedicated backup facilities,
fully operational and partially staffed for the inevitable. They
regularly rehearse their DR plan, although only a third of the
survey respondents say this is done twice per year as
recommended. And these are industry insiders whose focus is on
the unforeseeable.
Smaller companies, and companies where the IT infrastructure
that all companies have is not as business critical, tend to be
the organizations without formal DR plans and rehearsals. But
even these companies can efficiently plan for the unexpected.
Working with an equipment rental dealer that specializes in
business computer rentals – laptop rentals to replace
workstations that are temporarily inaccessible, server rentals
to which critical business data can quickly be transferred – as
well as the peripherals, set up assistance and maintenance
support for temporary worksites - is a great first step. It need
not be expensive or time-consuming to stage a mock trial for
getting rental laptops to employees and having your IT or
management-team transfer critical business data to rental
servers. Doing so periodically will highlight the glitches that
are likely to occur in inevitable disastrous scenarios where
everyone is flying by the seat of their pants to keep a business
running in what may seem like untenable circumstances.
The Forester/DR numbers show that amongst the surveyed
decision-makers or facilitators who have made it their business
to think in terms of disaster recovery and business continuity
in the face of the inevitable, only half of respondents expect
that they will be able to get the backup hardware and software
systems required for their "business-critical applications" up
and running in the first 30 hours following a disaster that
makes continued operations at their main site untenable. Another
34 percent anticipate it will take up to 80 hours post-disaster
to get critical business applications up and running, and 15% of
those surveyed figure that even with their degree of
preparedness it will take in excess of 80 hours to boot up their
business critical applications.
Break that 80 hours up into normal business days, and that is
over two weeks' time. Most businesses, large or small, cannot
afford to be without their critical business applications and
the hardware to run them for two weeks. Starting to formulate a
plan for what your company would do in the face of disaster need
not keep you up at night. Talking to an equipment rental dealer
who specializes in business computer rentals, laptop rentals and
server rentals and finding what equipment and technical support
you can acquire when your business is in the teeth of a storm is
a great first step in dealing with a disaster that will almost
unavoidably land on your desk on a Tuesday afternoon when you
least expect it to.
About The Author: For information on laptop rentals and server
rentals for disaster recovery and business continuity planning
purposes visit http://www.vernoncomputersource,com/ or call
1-800-827-0352 to let us help you determine your needs get a
quick and accurate quote.
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=255676
No comments:
Post a Comment