Business Continuity Planning Often Falls Short
The high reliability and availability of modern computing platforms has created a false sense of security among IT professionals. According to Computer Economics’ IT Management Best Practices study, only 75% of IT organizations have a disaster recovery plan and only about half of those organizations claim that their plans are comprehensive and fully implemented.
Too often, disaster recovery is simply an information-technology-led exercise. There is a growing recognition, however, that contingency planning needs to go beyond recovery of IT systems to become a business-led process that prepares the organization for many forms of disruption and ensures that the business itself—not just the IT systems—will continue uninterrupted.
Figure 1 from our management advisory, A Practical Framework for Business Continuity Planning, illustrates the major activities that comprise business continuity planning:
Recovering complex business functionality from a catastrophic incident, natural or man-made, is much more difficult than recovering from a server failure or database corruption. The business continuity plan must be maintained and practiced as part of the everyday business operation. Failure to do so may lead to a complete business failure if a critical event occurs that has a direct impact on the business. Even if an organization survives, there is likely to be significant disruption and financial loss. Taking a short-sighted view may mean that although the IT systems may be recovered, the organization itself may go out of business.
The full report provides IT organizations with a practical, concise framework for developing a comprehensive business continuity plan.
This Research Byte is a brief overview of our management advisory on this subject, A Practical Framework for Business Continuity Planning. The full report is available at no charge for Computer Economics clients, or it may be purchased by non-clients directly from our website (click for pricing).
Print
this article.
Human Factors Behind Much IT Project Failure
Artificial Intelligence Use Grows as Companies Leverage Embedded AI Capabilities
Application Development Outsourcing Future is Murky
IT Help Desk Outsourcing Trend is All Downhill
Network Support Staff Meeting New Demands Without Adding People
IT Spending as a Percentage of Revenue by Industry, Company Size, and Region
IT Spending Ratios by Industry and Organization Size