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Many IT departments think disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity
(BC) are the same thing. As a result, they tend to take a largely
technology focus on the subjects.
And that’s a problem, according to Michael Croy, director of business
continuity at Forsythe Technology Inc., a Chicago-based IT consultancy
and infrastructure firm specializing in BC and risk management.
”Many people are still confused by the terms DR and BC,” says Croy.
”It is critically important that the DR plan is based on a solid BC plan
that has taken into account the reality of the business requirements for
recovery. If the DR plan cannot meet the requirements of the business
units, it is of no value.”
Croy says business continuity plans touch all functions of a business —
from personnel to facilities to IT. In terms of a hierarchical view,
business continuity is at the top. Below it is the disaster recovery
plan. And under that come technologies, such as enterprise backup,
recovery and restoration.
But true disaster recovery extends much more broadly than backup
processes by using mirrored sites and replicated data to respond to an
event. Similarly, business continuity goes well beyond disaster recovery
by encompassing every aspect of company operations that could be impacted
by a situation. Human resources, power supply maintenance or backup,
transportation, food, health and safety issues all fall within business
continuity.
The IT department with its disaster recovery plan is one element of a
larger business continuity scenario.
John Glenn, a certified business continuity planner based in Clearwater,
Florida, agrees that IT administrators need to take a wider view.
”Most people, especially MIS/IT folks, think BC is just a new name for
DR,” says Glenn. ”The difference is that DR for IT focuses solely on
IT, and what IT perceives as the business unit’s requirements. BC, on the
other hand, should focus on the business units and, by extension, all the
resources required by the business unit.”
Industry observers say it’s clear that disaster recovery is one element
of business continuity. While IT is junior to BC as a whole, the IT
organization plays a central role in business continuity.
”It’s a big mistake to think the IT department is the only department
needed to develop, test and recover the business,” says Gartner analyst
Roberta Witty. ”It is advisable to form a business continuity program
with a dedicated team of people with a senior management sponsor.”
IT, though, would provide one representative to the core BC committee.
According to Witty, the committee would be comprised of anywhere from two
to five members, depending on the size of the organization. This group
would take a wide view of potential disasters.
For example, consider employee health and welfare during an event. In a
regional outage, you can’t expect personnel to show up for business
recovery if they are having serious problems at home related to the
event. You must support them and help employees be better prepared at
home for disasterous events. The American Red Cross, she says, can be
brought in for this kind of training and awareness building.
Michael Gruth, head of system and network support at Deutsche Borse AG,
the German exchange for stocks and derivates, says the IT staff tends to
find it easier to relate to the hardware, software and networking
components of DR. He has assembled an Alphaserver/OpenVMS cluster over
two sites five kilometers apart. In the process, he discovered there is a
lot more to DR than additional Alphas and switches.
”Do not forget things like having an office at your mirror site for
remote management,” says Gruth. ”Also, don’t forget the human factor.
While it may sound harsh to think about having additional employees to
recommence business in the event of a tragedy, this is the reality we
live in since 9/11.”
To help IT come to terms with a broader scope than disaster recovery,
some IT organizations are dropping the term in favor of business
continuity.
”We have gotten away from the term ‘DR’ as it assumes the facility is
not available,” says Jeff Russell, CIO of The Members Group, an
Iowa-based company that provides card processing and mortgage services to
credit unions. ”BC, on the other hand, deals with how we continue
despite business interruption.”
State-of-the-Art Pencils
Disaster recovery projects can easily run aground or fail to be funded if
they are done in isolation. Glenn says it is essential to begin every
initiative from the business continuity perspective in order to give
technology its correct business context.
”Every organization I know about puts BC/DR under the IT umbrella,”
says Glenn. ”My preference is to put BC — of which DR is a subset —
under the CFO, CEO, COO… someone with some real clout.”
To make his point about business continuity not being a matter of
technology, Glenn enters the debate about what is the best platform for
disaster recovery, or what technological elements are most critical.
Should you use OpenVMS or UNIX, mirroring or disk-to-disk backup, SAN or
NAS, or all of them? Glenn cuts through the complexity and vendor hype
with a simple answer.
”My number one DR or BC technology is pencil and paper,” he says.
”Seriously, it’s not about platforms or technologies.”
