Business Continuity Building Blocks

Added by The Editor, about 1 year ago.

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Complex technology environments are a major stumbling block when it comes to building the case for business continuity investments

That's the finding of a recent poll of IT Sanctuary members, who tell us that, despite high-profile disasters of recent years, convincing the board to fund business continuity projects remains an uphill struggle.

Almost half (44%) said that the main challenge in building a robust case for business continuity is the diversity of corporate technology environments. In today's heterogenous data centre, they say, analysing the varying needs of multiple systems running in different operating environments is a more complex task than it ever.

More than one-quarter (28%), meanwhile, say that they lack the experience to build a solid business case, while one in ten (11%) lack the time to do so.

Lack of data was also a major stumbling block, cited by 17% of respondents. That's because a good business continuity plan relies on hard-core metrics such as recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). Without such metrics, it's very hard to gain the attention of those in charge of the purse strings.

Our take: Business continuity investments add little (if anything at all) to day-to-day operational performance - but, if the worst happens, they can suddenly look like an astonishingly good use of funds. Hindsight is a great gift, but devoting time, money and skills to business continuity can be an even greater one.

Comments

There are currently 2 comments about this blog.

Mandy Shaw, about 1 year ago

We've been discussing this whole matter internally this last week - here's some feedback I received from one of our senior architects: 'Traditional approaches to Business Continuity are ineffective and difficult to sell internally to the board. All too often the approach taken is to try to duplicate as much of the exisiting complexity as can be afforded or is considered priority. The correct approach to Business Continuity is about 2 things: 1) to preserve the ability to transact, 2) to understand and categorise risk. By preserving the ability to transact you provide business continuity. By understanding and categorising risk you enable yourself to assess and analyse different events and their likely impact on the ability to transact. Most businesses recognise the impact of complexity on the day to day ability to transact, and have embarked on a simplification process to reduce this complexity. However, lose sight of the ability to transact and you not only lose the battle in the boardroom, but also the battle to keep the business going.' I wholeheartedly agree with this.

Edward Charvet, about 1 year ago

On Behalf of Chris Gabriel: I like it. I think that dc complexity does make continuity expensive and thats why business are having to just look to keeping their core apps going and not everything. Simplification and virtualsation can help this because we then have standartdised platforms for delivering continuity. Too many apps is still an issue, but too many platforms and too much data is the real challenge. Chris