Before September 11, anyone who had ever tried to persuade an organisation to part with money to fund disaster recovery and/or business continuity requirements was quickly met with resistance. The difficulties in acquiring the necessary funding has typically led to a two-tier approach when coping with an immediate incident. The first part of the program, the disaster recovery plan, is put in motion when coping with an immediate (and often short-term) incident and traditionally provides for the most critical elements of the business -- for example, typically no more than 20 percent of an organisation's workforce will have a desk at which to work. The second tier, the business continuity plan, comes into play during a longer-term, major incident, and would provide guidance on how to get the remaining 80 percent of the workforce back to work in the shortest possible time. This latter plan is now where much focus lies following the tragic events in New York City. 11 September created unique challenges for disaster recovery
All of the organisations affected by the 9/11 disaster have, to varying degrees, invoked disaster recovery plans. Many of the plans feature agreements with disaster recovery service providers that are contracted to provide emergency desk space. Yet despite some prearrangements with providers, the events of 11 September brought about some unique difficulties for all parties. Although a company may hold an individual contract with a service provider, the emergency space promised in the agreement is usually shared with other companies. Disaster recovery service providers base their plans on the probability that multiple clients will not invoke their agreements at the same time for the same space -- an unforeseen issue in the case of the New York City events. While the client organisation is busy restoring business as usual, the disaster recovery service provider is left with as many as six other clients who share that same disaster recovery space and cannot invoke that space if necessary. This leaves the disaster recovery service suppliers looking for alternate space as well, possibly competing with their clients to find suitable housing. Further, service providers predict an expected duration of occupancy following an invocation. The typical expectation is that recovery from the incident will occur within days, or at worst, within two to three weeks -- clearly not enough time for the organisations affected by the events of 9/11. Given the scale of the destruction in New York, organisations are left with the prospect of having to occupy a disaster recovery site for the full term of their contract, usually a maximum of six months. During this time, business continuity plans must come into effect and should include the acquisition of alternate premises (possibly a move to another location within the same organisation) to allow the full complement of staff to resume normal work. Plans must take all scenarios into account
The extreme scenarios that have occurred as a result of the terrorist attacks in New York City provide a good lesson in how sometimes, even the best-laid plans can fail. organisations must now learn from these types of events and adapt current disaster recovery and business continuity plans to reflect these new issues and needs. Dave Shore, a member of the Institute of Directors in the UK and president of Dave Shore Consulting, has worked with technology within the financial services sector since 1970. A former IT director, his work was recognised in 1993 with the IT For Business Excellence Award, cosponsored by The Sunday Times and Andersen Consulting. During 2000-2001, he was program director for a major global bank and was responsible for reviewing its UK disaster recovery operations and establishing a business continuity plan to cover its 3,500 UK-based users. Stay tuned
In the second part of this series, we will investigate how the Internet can help disaster recovery and business continuity planners put forward more cost-effective solutions.
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