Today’s reliance on IT facilities and computing systems in the operation of everyday business makes disaster recovery plans more important in 2011 than ever before.
Whether you’re a small, family-run firm or a large multinational corporation, having a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place is an important part of your business’ long-term success. Disaster recovery involves the establishment of contingency plans should your company experience a major disruption, from simple power failures to more serious events like fire, floods or an earthquake.
Although disaster recovery has been a vital component of businesses continuity strategies for several decades, the contemporary reliance on IT facilities and computing systems in the operation of everyday business makes such contingency plans more important in 2011 than ever before. However, if you’re new to disaster recovery planning – or it’s been a while since you bolstered your existing strategy – it can be difficult to know where to start.
Putting a disaster recovery plan together
A good disaster recovery strategy should be an integral part of a company’s business continuity plan and, should a significant disruption occur, its recovery time and future success will largely depend on the effectiveness of such contingency operations. While there are several dimensions to disaster recovery, the basic objective should be to minimise downtime and get business activity up and running within a time period specified in the contingency plan. This also involves prioritising the internal processes within a business.
The complexity of disaster recovery planning means that many large businesses rely on specialist help to form their contingency strategies. However, if you run a small or independent business on a limited budget, there are certain fundamentals that should be borne in mind. For starters, you’ll need to ensure that if your office loses access to continuous power, you have facilities in place to replace this supply – for example, through generator hire. You’ll also need to ensure that this disruption does not lead to widespread data loss and that data protection and internet security precautions have not been interrupted. Cloud hosting and remote back-up services are particularly useful in this instance.
Office conditions and temperature control
It’s also important to ensure that the conditions in your office still adhere to UK employment regulations after your businesses has experienced a disaster or major disruption. If you’ve lost access to continuous power and are running on a generator, for instance, you may also need to pay attention to the temperature controls within your office. In winter, this may involve hiring heaters while summer weather may call for air conditioning or chiller rental.
In the most extreme cases – in the wake of a flood or a fire for example – office conditions may be altogether unusable. Resultantly, a crucial component of a good disaster recovery plan is the existence of a back-up site to which operations can be moved temporarily until a permanent base is re-established. ibm disaster recovery
