our disaster planning and recovery services
Disaster planning is often overlooked by small and medium business, as it addresses only a small possibility that there might be a serious disaster sometime in the future. While the chances of disaster are remote, the impact of a disaster that affects all IT systems is tremendous.
"IT IS ESTIMATED that most large companies spend between 2% and 4% of
their IT budget on disaster recovery planning, with the aim of avoiding
larger losses in the event that the business cannot continue to
function due to loss of IT infrastructure and data. Of companies that
had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% close within
two years, and only 6% will survive long-term."
Source: Wikipedia
We had a serious server outage due to failed hardware, which affected the majority of our operations.
Our disaster plan had not yet been fully implemented, but the experience of the activIT systems team enabled us to deploy contingencies and workarounds that kept us going while the servers were being repaired.
We adopted a number of their recommendations afterwards, and system reliability has improved significantly.
Craig Ferrier
Aurox Resources Limited
With such high stakes involved, it is imperative that corporate executives understand the implications of not having a disaster recovery plan. We understand them, because we have first hand experience of disasters where no plan has existed. Here are a handful:
- Mass confusion and extremely high stress amongst management, staff, and IT personnel
- Irreplaceable data can be lost, which may lead to litigation
- Your company might not comply with governmental or industry regulations
- Staff are idle, their wages wasted because they are unable to perform their duties
- Your company could be sued for damages by your suppliers or customers
- Customers can be lost because you're unable to respond, deliver, or assist them
There are several preventative measures that can be taken to minimize the likelihood of a disaster, most of which you should already have implemented. Measures such as backing up data to tape or hard drive, taking the backup off site, and running an uninterruptable power supply to protect critical systems are common amongst businesses and are the first step in disaster planning.
The next steps involve higher level planning, risk management and analysis, procurement of support contracts with vendors, high level redundancy in networks and systems, and that's where activIT systems comes in. We're passionate about keeping your systems running. When there is a disaster - and eventually there will be - we're on the job straight away with a clear set of objectives.
:: contact us about our disaster planning and recovery services
