Before Xmas, Array Networks was telling a great story about its new Flex License business continuity plan.
These SSL Virtual Private Networks were going to automate disaster recovery. Which would not only save enterprise customers millions, it would make business continuity affordable to SMBs. And it would make a lot of money for IT resellers.
But Xmas is over now, and Array don’t have a UK office any more.
There’s continuity for you!
Do you have a better business continuity story to tell? I hope you. Please answer the questions below.
What are the top ten (or seven or five) threats to business continuity? (in order of importance)
Which sectors are particularly prone to stoppages? Which are particularly threatened?
(Banking? Retail? )
Are SMBs worth offering business continuity services to? Or are they just too small, and unwilling to pay?
Is anyone attempting to offer them BC services?
What are the major disciplines in business? Technology? Back Ups? People management? Logistics?
What types of service can resellers offer?
Are you a vendor? Outline your business proposition for your partners?
What are the dangers of offering business continuity? Could you be sued if your continuity service doesn’t deliver, even if it was for reasons outside your control?
Case studies:
Has anyone got any great business continuity stories? Can you strip out all the adjectives and tell them in less than 50 words?
FACTS AND FIGURES:
Got any interesting stats?
The cost of downtime? The dangers of downtime? The likelihood of a terrorist strike?
Box:
What are the questions we should ask about business continuity?
I can quote you in a magazine article on this subject if you include the following:
Name, job title, company name, company switchboard number, company web address.
A picture (jpeg of 300 DPI) is always helpful.
February 7, 2007 at 12:41 pm |
Which sectors are particularly prone to stoppages? Which are particularly threatened?
(Banking? Retail? )
“Stoppages pose a huge risk for retail, finance, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors in particular. This is largely because the environments in which these businesses operate are in a constant state of change, so as little as a few seconds of downtime can have serious repercussions for the overall business operation. In retail for example, if a supermarket chain’s IT system is down even for a 30 seconds, all transactional data relating to customer purchases can be lost leading to incorrect financial statements, balances and dirty data. Or, in the pharmaceutical industry, an entire batch of drugs can become completely unusable if systems fail during the manufacturing process and a portion of the production data is lost.
“All businesses need to consider business continuity, but instances such as these are great examples of how certain sectors risk making huge, in some cases crippling, financial losses if they fail to realise the importance of implementing a BC system. ”
Are SMBs worth offering business continuity services to? Or are they just too small, and unwilling to pay?
“This depends on what is meant by ‘business continuity’, and also what you mean by SMBs. Business continuity could just mean that a business can recover and ‘continue’ after some form of downtime, or, it could mean that the same business has the ability to continue business through a disaster, without downtime. Bearing this in mind, all companies, independent of size, rely on a variety of IT applications in their everyday operation, so no SMB can stick their head in the sand when it comes to BC.
“Obviously, companies with 10 staff have very different needs from those with 500 – although, technically, both are SMBs. Bigger businesses are likely to need a guarantee of constant, 24/7 uptime, whereas for middle market companies 99,9% high availability solution or a reliable data recovery system might be enough. But, the need to adopt some kind of a fault tolerant solution should never be question of business size. It also depends on the market in which the business operates – companies of all sizes in retail sector for example, should take measures to minimise downtime, as a systems failure could result in massive financial losses for the company.
“In addition to this, applications such as Exchange have become critical to the continued operation of many businesses. As a result application that need some form of BC solution are more varied and more common across all businesses. This has pushed business continuity higher on all businesses’ list of priorities than 10 years ago.”
Nick Turnbull, EMEA Sales Director, Marathon Technologies
http://www.marathontechnologies.com
+44 (0) 1344 706 219
February 8, 2007 at 11:40 am |
Thanks Nick