Disaster Recovery Journal

A few weeks ago we had a blog post about the business continuity plan (BCP) and what this really means for your organization. By thinking about the definition of the term and inherent actions within it, you can better understand what BCP really means for you and the longevity of your organization.

In this week's blog post, we'll take a deeper look at the disaster recovery plan (DRP). Of course, don't forget to visit the DRJ Glossary to get a very solid grounding in the basic terms and terminology associated with BCP and DRP.

When every business ranging from small to large organization runs on mission critical IT services, the data center services providers do their best to prevent, alleviate, respond and recover technology infrastructure from human induced and natural disasters. A subset and an integral part of business continuity, disaster recovery aims to create resilient business in the process.

A data center has to face challenges like power shortages, floods and sudden shut offs, pilferage, cooling etc. Data centers need to prepare beforehand to encompass the areas of emergency and plan the response and recovery accordingly. A disaster recovery plan can never be accurately prepared or predicted to bounce back from a disaster 100 percent fool- proof. So, a recovery plan should be flexible enough to cope up with the predicament of a disaster to minimize the losses.

Oh no…  There is a storm coming!

Oh no…  There is a labor strike coming!

Is the sky falling?  Or are we over sensitive?

June 23^rd 2010 is a date that for some will remain an important day, but for most of us, it was just another day. On this day, there was a 5.0 magnitude earthquake in the North East of North America.  If you live in an area that experiences these types of tremors on a regular basis, you’re probably giggling at the near hysterical response that did occur...  If you live in the North East, you experienced a one in 500 year phenomena!

When you think of disaster what do you think of? Chances are you put flood, massive power outage, fire, and pandemic at the top of your list. These are all events that really we can't control - the hurricanes are going to happen, the power does go out, fires happen sometimes due to human error, and health crisis are still one of the large mysteries of life. So for these events that may or may not happen, you understand the need to have a disaster recovery and business continuity plan. Since you're reading this blog post, I assume you have such a DR/BCP in place to keep your business working efficiently when "disaster" strikes. 

One of the ongoing problems in business continuity is articulating the business case in a way that resonates with executives and others in our organizations and doesn't require a twenty slide PowerPoint presentation.  In an attempt to help, "BC Stories - Elevator Pitches and Object Lessons" is a continuing series of posts based on timely and relevant news stories.  The idea is to give business continuity professionals ideas for informal conversations that highlight the need for planning while identifying potential pitfalls.