Wow! I was watching the news last night about the swarms of violent thunderstorms and tornadoes that devastated communities across eight states. This reminded me of an article that I read in Network Computing Magazine. The cover story “What If?” on disaster recovery in the March 2, 2006 issue. Right there on the front cover was the advice: “Don’t bet your business on a weak disaster-recovery plan.”
In January, Processor Magazine was also talking about what makes for a good disaster recovery plan.
I’m not surprised to see network, systems, and storage oriented press media focusing on this topic. After last summer’s truly disastrous hurricane season, experts are suggesting more fervently than every, that enterprises and government agencies must regularly evaluate and implement plans to ensure business continuity during catastrophic events. Look at the news this week alone – severe tornadoes and storms destroyed homes and buildings across parts of Tennesee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinios, Ohio and Arkansas.
There is no predicting where natural disasters or even human errors might disrupt normal business activity. Human error or computer viruses have impacted the energy grid – remember the blackout in August 2003 affecting power service from the Northeast to the Ohio Valley? Ensuring your business services, network communications, and mission critical applications are operational regardless of these types of disruptive situations is clearly essential because of the overwhelming dependency we have on them.
What is your business continuity plan? Does it include redundant data centers? Are you outsourcing to a 3rd party disaster recovery company?
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