Business Continuity Plan

When most companies hear “Information Technology (IT) disaster recovery,” they think of data recovery and off-site data storage. And even while most companies do not even have a sound data backup or off-site data storage, having both is only the beginning of disaster recovery.

While it is critical to have a sound backup and off-site data storage strategy, it takes a lot more to recover from a real disaster like Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Recovering from a major disaster is like building a new company from the ground up in an expectedly shorter period of time – short enough so that the business still has a chance of keeping its customers.  Detailing the entire scope of a Business Continuity Plan would take up more time than we have, so we are going to concentrate on the most vital aspects of major disaster recovery as they relate to small- and medium-sized businesses.

A major disaster implies the destruction of all major infrastructures of a business including but not limited to its IT infrastructure.

According to Gartner Group, an industry consulting firm, two out of five companies that experience a catastrophic event or prolonged outage end up shutting down for good. And of those that do, one out of three goes out of business within two years.  That means a full 60 percent of all organizations affected by a major disaster go out of business for various reasons, including the cost of trying to resume operations and losing the goodwill of customers.

One of the most unfortunate realities is that most small- and medium-sized businesses do not consider IT as a critical part of their business, judging from how IT is being managed in most of them – always from a cost standpoint.  IT should really be viewed as a competitive advantage for any business, specifically from a revenue standpoint.  While IT in itself cannot make the business, a well-run IT operation can and has delivered the difference in any successful business operation.

The point here is to have a successful IT disaster recovery strategy and involve IT planning from the very beginning of a business operation, not as an afterthought.  The real question one must ask is: what would it cost the business if all IT-related operations ceased to exist one day.  The same is true with any IT design, operation and decision-making; disaster recovery should be part of the life cycle of any sound IT operation.  IT disaster recovery certainly is not the entire Business Continuity Plan but, without the IT aspect, most Business Continuity Plans would not be complete.  And increasingly speaking, for certain businesses, having a sound IT disaster recovery plan alone may keep it running or at least provide enough operational support to buy time for other aspects of the operation came back in line.

So what kind of disasters are we are talking about here?

Well, below is a list of the possible disasters published by Agility, a disaster recovery firm. I have also added a few of my own. And as you can see, not all of them are featured on the Weather Channel: