Planning for the worst: Bring in the best
Expert advice is available for drawing up disaster-recovery and business contingency plans.
Thinking of overhauling your disaster-recovery plan? Fortunately, there are many companies that can give you some pointers.
The first step, of course, is acknowledging that disaster could affect you. "Never underestimate the human gift called denial," says Bruce Malik, an analyst at Gartner. "I think a lot of folks think they're luckier than average."
Next, recognize that there is a difference between business contingency and disaster recovery, and that plans for both are necessary. Business contingency means planning ahead for an emergency and identifying a plan to ensure critical networks and systems are up and running.
Disaster recovery, on the other hand, refers to a plan for reacting to an event.
Companies such as IBM Global Services' Business Continuity and Recovery Services, Comdisco and SunGard can help you formulate business contingency and disaster-recovery plans.
Organizations that can help (chart)
Disaster recovery: then and now
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These organizations interview key personnel and evaluate network, system and recovery plans, if there are such plans. They then come back with recommendations.
When developing and implementing contingency and recovery plans, it's important to keep it simple, according to experts.
"Disaster-recovery planning is a complex task, but organizations make it more complicated by throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the plan," says Damian Walsh, Comdisco's senior vice president of professional services. The tendency is to spell out plans
for everything - each unit, facility and employee, and "it becomes hundreds of pages," he says. "It's analysis paralysis."
Walsh says companies need to keep plans to one to two pages.
When an emergency occurs, consultants help companies restore operations by duplicating systems at a vendor's recovery site, shipping hardware replacements, moving operations and employees to hot sites, or bringing mobile centers to companies.
Build it in
By automating data recovery, it becomes one less matter to worry about when disaster strikes. "You have to figure the senior technical people won't be available [to recover data], and people who are available will be inexperienced or not mentally ready to do the job," says Rick Weaver, BMC Software's product manager for OS/390 recovery and storage management. "You forget the human element, so you automate as much as possible."
Network management tool vendors - including BMC, Tivoli Systems and Hewlett-Packard - offer a range of software that can back up and recover data on databases, monitor performance, recognize when new devices join a network, and manage who accesses certain information.
Industry analysts say that up to 60% of a company's critical data is stored on individual laptops and desktops. Network executives looking for more control over PCs can turn to companies such as Connected, which provides software for automated desktop backup and recovery to rebuild users' systems, right down to the wallpaper.
"Disaster recovery is a labor of love that needs to be nurtured, but it's everybody's stepchild," says Lou Berger, a StorageNetworks executive. "It's done begrudgingly and not often done well."
Some businesses are turning to storage service providers (SSP), such as Sanrise, Storability and StorageNetworks, for help. SSPs manage data storage for customers at their headquarters or collocate storage with other service providers in major cities, providing primary or secondary back-up storage.
Community organizations
Government and community organizations, such as the American Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, help businesses when it comes to personnel issues during disasters.
Before a disaster strikes, they say businesses should find out about available resources from local community government liaisons; public, fire and police departments; telephone companies; and electric utilities.
Other recommendations include:
In light of the terrorist attacks, many vendors have seen a dramatic increase in businesses seeking advice to revamp or create contingency and disaster-recovery plans.
"It's going to take a long time to forget those images, how it affected so many and the impact on businesses," BMC's Weaver says. Businesses are thinking about data protection beyond their own business, by expanding their supply, manufacturing and distribution contacts.
But StorageNetworks' Berger is skeptical about businesses' intentions for business contingency and disaster recovery.
"It'll likely wane in certain industries - and by December, you'll know who's serious about it when the budgets are made," he says.
| Where
to turn Some of the organizations that specialize in business contingency and disaster recovery include:
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RELATED LINKS
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