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Differentiating effective IT business continuity from disaster recovery

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With constant threats posed by extreme weather and external attackers, companies have increasingly recognized the importance of protecting their IT assets in the wake of a disaster. But the nature of that protection plan is often up for debate. Recovering from disaster means leveraging tools like online backup services at the very least. However, true resilience in the face of a disaster requires a more all-encompassing business continuity approach.

The plan goes beyond data protection and recovery
While backing up data so it can be restored in the wake of an outage is the bedrock of any business continuity plan, it's only half the battle. Depending on a business's approach, its backup solution may do it little good in the event of an actual disaster. For instance, some businesses relying on off-site tape storage have found themselves unable to restore their files at a secondary location after a storm because they couldn't physically travel to the tape storage facility due to flooding, industry expert Jarrett Potts explained in a column for Data Center Knowledge. Having a plan that encompasses the full recovery process is essential.

"IT disaster recovery plans are very important when one considers how intertwined organizations are with technology, but it is important to note that IT disaster recovery plans are not, by themselves, a complete business continuity strategy," Continuity Central contributor Michael Bratton explained in a recent article.

The solution is oriented toward application uptime
A key differentiator between disaster recovery and business continuity is that the latter's focus is keeping core business operations running. As Bratton noted, this approach goes beyond simply IT. However, from a tech perspective, it primarily means keeping critical applications running with as little interruption as possible. Through technologies like virtualization and a distributed network of colocation facilities, businesses can establish a flexible application hosting model that can easily weather unexpected events. The exact nature of the plan is likely to vary from company to company, so working with a third-party solution provider to develop a custom response can also be beneficial.

Real-world business continuity: The soaring costs of downtime

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Many organizations approach business continuity as an afterthought. When a company is building up its hardware footprint and application investments in support of its growing business model, contingency plans are often relegated to the backseat and linger there. These organizations find out too late about the costs of prolonged downtime and the difficulty involved in righting the ship only in the aftermath of an unplanned event. One recent report offers some fairly chilling statistics about widespread shortcomings and expensive consequences of ignoring business continuity planning.

The Ponemon Institute report on the cost of data center outages in 2013 found that organizations lose $7,900 per minute of downtime. The mean cost of a single data center outage is $627,418 and the maximum amount lost to a single incident was more than $1.7 million. The total and per-minute costs correlated to the size of the facility and the duration of the outage, while IT equipment failure represented the most expensive root cause of unplanned data center downtime. Financial hits were worse for companies in data center-dependent industries such as e-commerce, financial services and telecommunications.

Costs can quickly escalate as a business recovers from an unplanned incident. From detection and containment to lost revenues and dwindled productivity, the expenditures can be immense. An organization will suffer more for each area of its business continuity planning that is lackluster or poorly thought out. 

These findings convey the importance of having an effective business continuity approach in place. The approach is twofold – prevention and recovery. Eliminating root causes of downtime is vital, especially in the case of expensive ones like IT equipment that can be more effectively managed. Visibility and redundancy can help streamline efforts to get the system back on track following a surprise incident.

Virtualization can be a great asset to both aspects of business continuity planning, as a recent CIO.com webinar pointed out. It provides a more manageable, agile environment for continuity efforts, mitigates hardware vulnerabilities by slashing equipment needs and helps a company access its safely stored systems and applications immediately following an unplanned occurrence.

Managed services key to making disaster recovery planning stick

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Managed services can help organizations eliminate one of their biggest pain points – disaster recovery. Establishing and upholding continuity and contingency plans can be complicated and resource-intensive. Many businesses, especially fledgling ones, choose to shove disaster recovery planning on the back burner. Over time, the lack of attention paid to disaster recovery planning puts organizations at risk.

According to a recent study by The Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, many organizations are woefully unprepared for disaster to strike. Its global survey of more than 1,000 organizations, from small businesses to large corporations, found that a whopping 73 percent of organizations do not have adequate disaster recovery plans in place. Its other findings include:

  • 64 percent of respondents said that their organizations' disaster recovery efforts are underfunded.
  • More than 60 percent do not have fully documented plans.
  • Among the 40 percent that do have documented plans, 23 percent have never actually tested them to see if they work.
  • Of respondents that experienced outages, almost 30 percent lost data center functionality for days or weeks at a time.

Since there's no way of knowing when and how a potential disaster may occur, companies are gambling with their future every day they don't do something about their disaster recovery and business continuity planning efforts. Being proactive is the only way to successfully combat the effects of unplanned events.

Managed services can help organizations establish a meaningful, up-to-date disaster recovery system. They can provide concentrated data backup and system recovery services beyond those a business has the budget or time to uphold, noted MSPmentor. Keeping systems current, especially when an organization adds a new application or hardware, is key to eliminating vulnerabilities that stem from outdated disaster recovery plans. 

Proactive risk mitigation is important. Managed services providers can help organizations develop recovery time objectives for business-critical applications and conduct automated recovery testing. Having a dedicated IT staff on hand relieves companies of having to make their forays into the difficult science of disaster recovery and business continuity planning alone.

How to choose a colocation provider

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Colocation is an advantageous infrastructure model for any company concerned about supporting its data storage needs. Among the variety of data center, server placement and management options available, it's the one that directly marries an organization's desire to maintain control over its equipment with its need for better network and security support.

In a colocation environment, an organization leases data center space for servers it owns. The data center provider offers server racks, power, bandwidth and physical security. The organization retains control over server management, unless it chooses to outsource these needs to the provider as well. 

Simple, right? Because the colocation business is booming, it attracts a lot of upstart providers. Not all of them offer the same level of service. That's just the reality of the situation. Additionally, one provider's solutions may be right for one organization and match up poorly with another's needs. Misfiring on this selection can be a costly decision, not only in wasted capital expenses but potentially down the road if business continuity is affected, according to ComputerWeekly. 

Determining the most pressing concerns is a company's first step. For example, a company with its central location in an area more susceptible to natural disasters should look for a colocation facility in a safer area. Connectivity is another issue. While every business wants to stay online, some may be able to afford less than 99.999 percent uptime ("five-nines uptime") in exchange for a more cost-effective colocation plan. A financial services firm or federal entity may need to pay a premium to ensure servers are always available. It's simply a matter of weighing financial costs with the price of availability.

Security is a near-universal concern, while many organizations may be dealing with increased complications related to industry compliance, according to Data Center Knowledge contributor Bill Kleyman. A company needs to make sure its colocation provider is certified for adherence to compliance standards. A variety of physical and facility safeguards can provide additional protection, which may be the way to go if a company's colocation center is in a more populated area.