By Dave MacDougall – Business Development Consultant at Think4 IT Solutions
WHAT IS Business Continuity? Is it just another name for Disaster Recovery? These are often thought to be the same, but are like chalk and cheese!
Business Continuity is a solution that’s put in place in case of business disaster, whereas Disaster Recovery is post-disaster and can be very expensive.
Business continuity is a key element to all businesses but is often overlooked as it’s seen as an unnecessary expense. Comments like ‘we don’t need that’ are often stated at the thought of paying for something that hopefully is not going to be required. But is it unnecessary, what if it is required?
A traditional business has a server in the rear of the office, but what happens when it goes off-line? How long will staff be sitting around waiting for it to come back on-line? If you know the lost revenue of your business on an hourly basis then you’ll have a good idea of how much you’d pay for insurance to reduce this loss to a minimum.
Certain businesses have to follow guidelines set by authorities in their particular industry sector. These can stipulate in the event of a disaster a percentage of key staff should be able to continue to work from an alternative location. Imagine if your offices were flooded, would this be possible?
The key to a good business continuity plan is to identify the critical business applications that are needed. With the recent advances in technology business continuity has become much easier and far less expensive than before. A simple check list can be drawn up to be followed.
With cloud computing the traditional office server is becoming less of a fixture. The ability to work from anywhere on any device is helping drive businesses to have a continuity plan without them realising.
Taking the servers out of the business and putting them into a cloud or hosted environment can reduce the downtime to as little as five minutes a year, not forgetting the ability to work from anywhere if needed.
So, having the right plan in place is like having business insurance. You wouldn’t think twice about not having insurance, so why overlook business continuity?
If you think of Business Continuity as a methodology then you’ll already be building the plan and checklist. It really is a case of ‘what if…,’ ‘if this, then that…’
If you can think of every possible event that could affect your business and give it a solution then you’ll have your plan. Once you’ve have done this make sure it’s well documented, then shared with key staff members and suppliers.
Quick question: Assuming you do at least a daily backup of the business, how often do you test the integrity of the backup? Could you rely on it 100%?
