BCDR: Better Create Decent Response?
If you’re like me, chances are, when you were growing up, you may have entertained visions of becoming a fireman, a policeman, or an EMT – you know, the kind of career where you look disaster squarely in the eye and perform heroically.
Well, now that you’re an IT professional, you’re probably a little removed from the hoses and walkie-talkies, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play a crucial role if disaster strikes your business. The fact is, a well-planned business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR) plan is an indispensable “must” for the enterprise.
While virtually every enterprise has some type of BCDR plan, there are often some wide variations in their completeness and freshness. Are you ready for disaster? Or does BCDR mean “Better Create Decent Response”?
Below are some key points for you to think about:
- BCDR is Not “Set it/Forget it”
When you create your BCDR plan it’s tempting to check the box and move on to the next priority on the list. But BCDR isn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing, continuous process that requires regular updates. When you change your infrastructure, you should update the BCDR plan. And don’t forget to test it regularly.
- Don’t forget the people
Even world-class servers, apps, and networks have no value if your employees, clients, and partners can’t access them. What’s “the BCDR plan for the people” to ensure they can remotely access those services and their desktop environments? Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) is increasingly a crucial component of the modern BCDR plan.
- It’s Not Just You
Even a flawless internal BCDR plan is not enough. Vast portions of the corporate IT infrastructure are highly dependent on the performance of organizations that are outside your walls. Do you have a solid grasp of their commitment to BCDR? Have you evaluated their facilities, plans, and contingencies of your Web hosting provider, email provider, or SaaS application provider? After all – if they experience a catastrophic disruption, you could be experiencing the same disruption by proxy. Remember: SLAs are not the same as a true BCDR plan.
- Capitalize on the Cloud
Don’t overlook the tremendous advantages that cloud infrastructures can bring to BCDR by offering greater flexibility to create better and faster solutions that are significantly easier to manage. Today, the cloud is enabling real-time, offsite backups of transactional-level data – a platinum standard for data protection and BCDR.
- A Better ROI through Load Balancing
You can’t simply build out a virtual “IT ghost town” – an offsite insurance policy that sits idle, waiting for disaster to strike. The costs of a non-performing asset are too great. Instead, many companies are creating two parallel hot sites and deploying well-designed applications that run in multiple locations with automatic, transparent failover. If a hurricane strikes the East Coast, users automatically failover to the California data center. With load balancing, a DR site isn’t an insurance policy – it’s a working asset that delivers constant value and return.
- One Size DOESN’T Fit
All Cloud-based BCDR represents a true boon to IT, letting you define and deploy far more granular and cost-effective RPOs and RTOs to minimize or eliminate downtime or lost data. The result is a BCDR approach that offers greater flexibility because there is no “one size fits all” solution in this discipline. With cloud-based BCDR, you have the flexibility to make that happen faster and more cost-effectively than ever before. A BCDR plan must be a living, breathing strategy that is revised and reviewed as the business environment – internal and external – changes.
Learn more by downloading our whitepaper The Six Most-Overlooked Principles in Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Strategies.