Stand the Test of Time with Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
In today’s volatile business environment, anything can happen at any time. Disasters can be natural or manmade but a successful enterprise is one, which knows its limitations and puts in place disaster recovery measures to reduce its impact (on its business operations) and thereby ensure business continuity. Most IT people consider Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery as synonymous. These are definitely closely related practices as it shows the preparedness of an enterprise in dealing with unforeseen risks to ensure continued business operations. However, it can never be used interchangeably. Hence, before delving into BCDR, let’s understand the fundamental difference between the two.
Wikipedia defines disaster recovery as “the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster.” Business continuity refers to the activities performed by an enterprise to keep all aspects of a business functioning not just during and after a disaster but at all times.
In today’s competitive and fast-paced business environment, business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) is very important, as it is one of the key differentiating factors for customer acquisition and retention. Besides, lack of an effective BCDR plan seals the fate of the enterprise. The following statistics substantiate it.
· 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
· Companies that are not able to resume operations within ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic Research Institute)
· Eighty percent of companies that fail to rebound from a major data loss within one month have a significant chance of closing (Bernstein Crisis Management)
Hence, enterprises must put in place an effective BCDR plan so that customers, suppliers, regulators and other entities have uninterrupted access to critical business functions. Otherwise, enterprises can seek the services of third party solution providers whose business continuity disaster recovery services use the right solutions and tools to create a disaster recovery plan that works for them. Here’s what a DR plan will do.
- Protect against potential threats
- Minimize disruption and operational losses
- Manage the recovery operation in an organized and effective manner
- Restore and build back confidence of investors, stakeholders and customers
- Manage brand image and reputation
- Survival
Business continuity and disaster recovery are the two sides of the same coin and only those enterprises that put in place an effective BCDR plan can stand the test of time.
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