There is no substitute
for peace-of-mind
40% of all companies that experience a major disaster will go out of business if they cannot gain access to their data within 24 hours.
-- Gartner
Disaster Recovery: the ability to recover designated critical systems within specific time frames.
Protection of data and Business Continuity are growing concerns for most businesses and a great deal of money is spent trying to protect a corporation's data. The largest issue is that most businesses do not know, with any certainty, that their information is properly protected, and because they do not know, they are exposed to data and business interruption.
Continuity Centers recovery services will provide your business with 100% certainty that your data is protected on a daily basis, will help reduce costs, reduce risk and simplify the way in which your data protection is managed. Most importantly, our data replication services combined with application recoverability will provide your business with timely access to your data and applications in the event of a disaster.
How to get started
Before deciding on the appropriate level of protection for your business, you should first be able to answer these questions:
- How much does down time cost our business in lost revenue, wages paid to idle employees, time and energy to recreate data, loss of new business, reputation, etc.?
- How long can my business' data be inaccessible for?
- Which data must be online first?
- What types of disasters am I looking to protect against? Do I want to protect against smaller more common failures such as hardware failures and power outages or is my primary concern the larger disasters that may leave my building inaccessible?
For a small business, the Principals and Management may be able to answer these questions themselves. For the mid-sized and large companies, our Business Continuity Consultants can help you determine the answers to these questions as well as provide methodologies and industry standards on how to keep your business running during a business interruption.
Understanding the following terms is the next step in determining how your company's data should be protected, which then drives the appropriate technology for data protection and business continuity.
Recovery Time Objective - RTO
The amount of time it takes to make your applications and data available to your employees and clients. “We must have our systems back online within X number of hours.” X number of hours is your RTO. Typically, not all applications and systems must be brought back online within the same time frame. Review the impact of downtime from each of your systems and we will design your recovery around your objectives.
Recovery Point Objective - RPO
The point in time to which data must be recovered after an outage. “We cannot afford to lose more than 4 hours or 24 hours worth of work.” For your mission critical data, our real-time replication provides you with Continuous Data Protection (CDP), ensuring that as you create data, it is immediately secured off-site, for zero data loss. For less critical data, our Off-Site Data Backup and Vaulting services provide you with a 24 hour RPO.
Whether your business has a low RTO requiring fast recovery, or the need for long term off-site data protection, our services will help you reach your goals or compliance requirements. Contact us today to help you design a solution specific to your business needs.
Most regulations do not mandate how data should be protected but do have disaster planning requirements and require provisions for data backup. Compliance is only the catalyst, not the driver - Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity solutions should have their own value and should allow IT to better support the business.
Top Disaster Recovery Roadblocks
- Lack of planning, resources and time
- Lack of knowledge or expertise
- Setting unrealistic deadlines
- Lack of practice or exercise
The Keys to Success
- Understand what is critical to your business
- Know the value of data and downtime
- Think beyond tape backup
- Get your data out of the building
- Recover systems quickly
- Practice, practice, practice
- Don't forget people, process, communication
Understanding industry terms and acronyms will aid you in designing your business continuity and disaster recovery plans. Click here to view a comprehensive Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Glossary.
You can find additional planning resources for Business Continuity at the Disaster Recovery Journal's web site.
Want to know what our clients have to say about how we helped them stay in business? Click here to meet them in our YouTube video. And if you want to brush up on your acronyms and BCDR vernacular, see our Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Glossary here.