When I travel the country and talk to Overland’s VAR partners and their end-user customers, I’m frequently struck by how often IT professionals tell me that “Business Continuity” and “Disaster Recovery” are one and the same thing.
A Google search tends to support this position, as evidenced by the number of hits returned from entering “business continuity disaster recovery.” Equating these activities, however, takes into account neither the enormity of “business continuity” nor the specialized nature of “disaster recovery.”
Denver, where I lived for a number of years, has both loads of sunshine and some great views of the Rocky Mountains. But Denver also gets some ferocious hail storms. When hail stones start to fall, automobile dealers do what they can to shield their inventory from the storm. Frequently, however, hail pounds the cars unmercifully, reducing their value and making them impossible to sell as is.
Figuring out how to stay in the car business in Denver after a hail storm is an example of practicing “Business Continuity.” The storm didn’t touch the computing center or the dealership’s data, but it threatened the survival of the business.
Well, you might say, that’s what insurance is for--and you would be exactly right. An automobile dealership in Denver buying an insurance policy that covers unwanted and unexpected losses and damage caused by hail storms is a prudent form of planning for business continuity.
But it has nothing to do with IT.
Like the insurance policy, IT disaster recovery combines the prudence of preparing for an unexpected event with a well thought out business continuity plan. IT disaster recovery, therefore, is merely a subset of a comprehensive business continuity strategy.
IT disaster recovery is multidimensional. Replacement conditioned computing space, server hardware and networking components can be bought and set up 7 x 24. These are replaceable components. But there is one component that is NOT replaceable–your business-critical application data.
Think how quickly you could get your business’ IT infrastructure back online. But what if you couldn’t quickly locate or reconstruct your customer, inventory, manufacturing or financial databases? You’d be out of business.
When thinking about Business Continuity, be sure to incorporate a comprehensive IT plan for Disaster Recovery. And make absolutely sure your IT disaster recovery plan pays special attention to maintaining copies of business-critical application data at a remote, secure location.
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Bob Farkaly
Vice President, Worldwide Sales