Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are two very different processes. They are essential for the running of any computer room or data centre where losing essential services will lead to major disruption to the business, or even business failure.
Business Continuity Planning
'A plan of action to be taken in the event of serious disruption to a computer room or data centre, including priorities for recovery, in order to keep an organisation running as normally as possible at all times, even in an emergency.'
Disaster Recovery
A plan for re-establishing or reproducing operations after a catastrophic event.
BCP may follow DR, but may also be required when no disaster has occurred.
A Business Continuity Plan requires constant review and updating in order to reflect the changing nature of a business. A BCP includes not just the ‘how’, but also the ‘who, what, when and where’.
Disaster Recovery will create the need for a BCP, DR will never occur without the implementation of the appropriate BCP. DR is often not invoked due to loss of service or physical disaster, but may be invoked for many other reasons.
Migration Solutions can help a business develop its data centre or computer room Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan.
Migration Solutions has extensive experience in the development, testing and implementation of Business Continuity Plans. The development of a plan is a complex mix of departments, functions, people, process and procedure. Migration Solutions can assist in the development of a BCP with a unique understanding of the technologies, business processes and need for prioritisation. Migration Solutions operates data centres and computer rooms and have developed and tested BCPs for many organisations, ranging from small organisations providing support to end users, through to global corporations, providing business to business services, and to large financial institutions with time critical applications and processes that are highly regulated.
Getting buy-in from the business sponsors and ensuring that a sponsor is appointed for each functional area of the business will help to prioritise the plan to decide which services are needed immediately, within the first 24 or 72 hours, what is needed for ongoing business operation and what is needed to maintain business as usual. With these people on board, and involved from an early stage, testing of the plan on a regular basis with people from each business area should become second nature, and with minimal disruption to business operations.
Not all applications will be business critical, but they still need prioritising.
Any BCP is only as good as its last test and best practice would suggest that a BCP should be tested at a minimum twice yearly.
Migration Solutions consultants offer unrivalled experience and in-depth knowledge of the technology, connectivity and process needed for DR and can help a business identify the right solution and guide the process to provide maximum value. We are computer room and data centre specialists and understand the requirements from infrastructure to technology, to people and process.
A successful DR strategy depends on identifying critical systems, legislative requirements and building them into a plan, support arrangements, and connectivity requirements; for example network changes that may need to change in the event of invoking DR.
A successful DR plan should be tested twice per year and include all aspects of a full invocation. It is equally important to test ‘recovery from the recovery’, i.e. to get back to the primary site after an invocation.
Migration Solutions offers a comprehensive range of services for both Business Continuity Planning and for Disaster Recovery. Its consultants are unique in their understanding of both business and technological drivers and of their understanding of computer rooms and data centres from infrastructure to technology. Migration Solutions can help to ensure that in the event of serious disruption or disaster, business can continue and survive the impacts of potentially damaging events.