| CXO Briefing, Vol 1 No 2 |
Disaster Recovery vs Business Continuity: What’s the difference?More businesses have an information technology disaster recovery plan than a comprehensive business continuity plan. Why? Because for many businesses information technology services are essential to the operation of the company. Without them the company simply could not function, even down to the point of answering the phone. In a typical IT disaster recovery plan backup data is stored off-site and plans are made to reestablish the data center to a new location; either acquiring and installing servers and applications or turning up the replicated remote site in the event of a disaster. However, these plans, typically drawn up by the IT department, generally do not address overall business operations, with operations here being generally classified as the various people and processes that make the business work. In essence the IT department has a disaster recovery plan, but every other department in the business does not. Were an actual event to occur the information systems may become available but the rest of the organization would be left scrambling to come up with solutions. A better approach would be to form a business continuity program with a dedicated team of people, a senior management sponsor and possibly an outside consultant. This may be anywhere from a 2-5 member team such as accounting, production, IT and administration. In smaller organizations it would be ideal to have the CEO as the sponsor or a least the COO. This group would take a wider view of potential disasters, their needs and how they could recover from a disruption. The amazing aspect of this is that the cost of this pre-planning is very small yet the benefits can be enormous. For business continuity it’s not really about platforms or technology it’s about being aware of the risks and planning for them. So in terms of a pyramid view business continuity is at the top. Below is the disaster recovery plan and underlying that comes the technologies such as backup, off-site replication, virtualization, etc.. Most organizations put BC/DR under the IT umbrella. In reality the CEO, CFO, COO, someone with real clout, needs to be responsible for and spearhead comprehensive BC, of which DR is just a subset. It may even be helpful to get away from the term “DR” and think in terms “BC”; “how can we continue our vital business functions despite this interruption”.
Eric Langley Sr. is the President and CEO of networksystems.com and myManagedBackup.com. networksystems.com provides Business Continuity consulting services. myManagedBackup.com |