'Twas the night after Christmas,

and all through the house, no data was moving, not even a wireless mouse.

Poor pastiche aside, how much protection do your essential business systems have? Check now, before the holidays, in case it's not all quiet!

. . .

Burst pipes, and even just ordinary hardware failures aren't unusual, even in modern buildings. 'Unscheduled events' very commonly affect IT systems, probably hurting the business more than they need to.

It's not just externalities either (the weather, power cuts, and so on) that cause problems. If system usage patterns change suddenly, that too can bring issues. Every so often there's a news report of a well-publicised special offer, or a tax deadline, bringing yet another IT system to its knees. And these are usually big systems, supposedly managed by IT experts!

Where should responsibility lie?

Unexpected demand can crash web servers, as can insufficient storage, memory, or even just processors overheating. But protecting against these isn't just something for the geeks to deal with. There are business issues too, and any effective plan needs good teamwork between IT and business management. That's not because the MD should be qualified in IT, but because every backup system requires funding and other resources too. The fundamental questions are, "What are the risks?" and, "how much IT insurance do we need?"

If you're in charge, you know your business! And you, better than anyone else, can predict demand and usage patterns. Will there be surges in demand? If an unrelated disaster strikes, how much could a system failure actually cost you?

Measuring risk meaningfully

Here are a few quick things to consider, if you're doing your own support in-house.

If your organisation makes regular, reliable (tested) backups but has no other standby resources, these numbers are a good rule of thumb for a 'panic response':

For each enterprise affected by an IT 'outage':

• Allow six hours lost productivity for any storage failure needing a full restore from backups.
• Allow for at least one day's lost productivity for any hardware failure requiring a system rebuild.
• Allow three days lost for any failure if key hardware has to be procured during the incident.
• Add one working day for each public holiday occurring during the incident - two days is more realistic.

The more structured protection you have in place, the more those times will reduce.

Counting the cost

The other big consideration is how much will such an interruption cost you? If the answer is, "not much," then just ensuring you have up-to-date backups is probably sufficient. Ask yourself these questions:

• Can you move processes onto paper while the system is fixed?
• Can you catch up later?
• Is an email delay acceptable?
• Can people work on PCs without the network?
• Is the phone system separate from your IT? How is it powered?
• Can you do your banking by more than one route?
• Ultimately, could you afford to send staff home if necessary?
• Will your commercial insurance pay out adequately?

If the answers are 'yes,' you'll probably be fine. If 'no,' you need to do more than just hope systems will keep working.

Discuss with your IT team what 'disasters' are planned for and what's in place already. Is there an audited, tested plan? It doesn't need minute detail necessarily, but people need to know their roles in a crisis, and what should be prioritized. Agree with your IT team what extras you need to budget for.

Should you outsource your disaster recovery provision?

Obviously, you'd expect us to say, "yes!" The truthful answer, however, is, "not necessarily."

The obvious advantage of outsourcing DR cover is that costs can be shared across several businesses, so the overhead should be considerably less for an individual enterprise. On the other hand, in any crisis affecting an entire locality, a flood, for example, you may have to join a queue for help.

Owning the necessary assets can protect you, but, obviously, there's cost. You have to store them, maintain them, and ultimately dispose of and replace them, hopefully unused. Thus DR outsourcing can be very cost-effective, if it will work for you. We recommend you discuss the issues with your IT team, and we'll be delighted to talk it over with you too.

Continue to anticipate problems

They say only pessimists have pleasant surprises, and to an extent it's true. You do need to revisit any plan regularly, and you need to respond to changing circumstances.

It's amazing what chaos can still break out over a cold winter break, even in the mild climes of Bristol. This writer was working over a January week-end in the 1980s when a metre-long icicle fell off an overhang and through the canteen roof! Unexpected? Yes. Unpredictable? No! Happily, nobody was hurt, but the ice build-up had been the subject of gossip for days beforehand, and a bit of forethought would have saved the roof (and several sets of nerves!).

If you can imagine it (or actually see the icicles!), you can plan for it happening, and plan for how you might cope. Then you can curl up on the sofa with the kids and watch Tom and Jerry!

• < Prev
• Next >