"Disaster Planning Needs to Be a Formal Process," Says Latest Research on Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Recovery

Disaster planning needs to be a formal process with backup procedures defined and formal training for all involved according to Aberdeen's (News - Alert) recent research report titled "Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Recovery: Making Your Datacenter Disaster Resilient."

 

Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst and Author of the Study said, 'Disaster recovery strategies and results continue to be an important topic for IT groups. Only 7% of enterprises rate their data center's uptime as being either 100% or 99.999% (less than 1 hour of downtime a year). That means that the vast majority of enterprises worldwide continue to have costly business interruptions due to a negative IT event.'

 

Automation has advanced to the extent that the loss of a single server or network device can bring an enterprise to a full stop. Even the loss of internal, traditionally less important systems such as email, web access, and desktop applications can result in the loss of employee productivity and lead to lower employee job satisfaction.

 

The report by Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company, features research based on a survey of the DR strategy of over 100 companies. Aberdeen found that formal planning, keeping the plan current, and reporting against that plan were the most important factors in preventing business disruption; more important than the size of the company, the length of time they have had a DR program in place, or the number of IT resources employed.

 

Aberdeen's research found that formal documentation of the disaster recovery plan is a key component of 88% of industry-leading DR programs. A well-designed plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, not just the computer infrastructure. This plan defines the roles and responsibilities of employees for dealing with all potential events.

 

Only 22% of companies calculate their hourly cost of downtime. This metric is important to scope the right level of investment and response to business interruptions.

 

The report Disaster Avoidance and Disaster Recovery: Making your Datacenter Disaster Resilient is made available due in part to the support of Vision Solutions, Iron Mountain (News - Alert) and VizionCore.

 

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