Whenever accidents, disasters and natural events interrupt data processing activities, one thing is certain: businesses lose money.
How much money often depends on how prepared companies are for dealing with data processing interruptions. A current, well-planned and well-rehearsed disaster-recovery plan often spells the difference between smoothly and quickly returning to business as usual or reeling from the divesting repercussions for months or even years.
Any event that interrupts business due to the loss or denial of information required for normal operations qualifies as a disaster. The disaster-recovery plan is a blueprint for recovering from these events.
It does not seek to duplicate a business. Rather, its intent is to increase the chances of survival and to decrease the effects of the loss.
Growing Interest
A succession of natural and man-made disasters in the United States in recent years -- the San Francisco earthquake, the Chicago River flood, Hurricane Andrew and the attacks on New York's World Trade Centre -- has spurred corporate interest in disaster recovery.
Frequently, it's not disasters themselves that prompt corporate leaders to invest in disaster-recovery planning for their information-technology systems. Typically, the move originates from the mandate of financial institutions, the sting of a negative external audit or the threat of a shareholders' lawsuit.
Even when companies acknowledge the benefits of data recovery, many executives don't feel a sense of urgency, putting off the necessity planning until sudden disaster strikes.
The reality is that any business that relies on information technology, which includes most businesses, needs a disaster-recovery plan.
This is especially true for medium and small companies that, unlike large companies, have limited resources. These companies are often the first to succumb to a disaster.
What does it take to develop a disaster recovery plan? Basically, there are three steps that a company needs to take: get management support, create the plan and rehearse the plan.
Getting Management Support
Management support is essential because disaster-recovery planning costs money and effects the entire company. Getting that support can, at times, be difficult for a number of reasons. Some managers are reluctant to invest in something that they probably - and hopefully -- will never need. Others are optimists, believing disasters are things that happen to other companies.
Still others believe that they are already prepared. After the 1994 San Francisco earthquake, for example, some managers thought, "If we can survive a 7.2 earthquake, we can survive anything."
Despite the reading on the Richter scale the earthquake did little physical damage, and there was no damage. The truth is, however, the company wasn't prepared; it was just lucky.
Overcoming management objections to disaster-recovery planning requires increased awareness of risks and their potential impact. Most managers are quick to come up with a couple of disasters that could interrupt access to information.
However, there is a long list of events that can interrupt critical information-technology service. Shown a list, managers are quick to identify more disasters.
Besides identifying the risks, it is equally important to substantiate the cost of downtime in dollars by asking and answering, "How much money does the company stand to lose if critical applications are not available?"
Loss of a sales system costs US$10,000 per day in lost sales, that's US$50,000 in lost sales for the working week, plus the other costs, such as salaries for idle people. Disaster-recovery planning also can provide some up-front benefits, such as lowering premiums for business interruption and other insurance.
Finally, it's important to have a project plan that defines a reasonable period of time for developing the plan, the resources available, budget required and key milestones for measuring the success of the project.
