The Disaster Recovery Plan
A Backup Article Contributed by Ashley Lister
The Disaster Recovery Plan
The reasons for creating a disaster recovery plan are compelling: too many businesses that don't have a plan never manage to recover after a serious disaster. It is estimated that 40% of those businesses without disaster recovery plans never recover from the more serious disasters. Rather than being one of the losers, it makes sense to take the time needed to insure yourself against becoming one of these unfortunate statistics.
Whether Calamity Occurs in the Form of a Fire, Flood, Theft or Some Other Unforeseen Occurrence, Disaster Can Strike with Unerring Accuracy at the Most Inconvenient Times and Spontaneous Recovery is Difficult to Manage. All Too Often, Recovery is Never Managed.
Being Prepared, with a Workable Disaster Recovery Plan, Could Give You the Edge between Success and Failure in the Days Following a Disaster. Too Many People Never Manage an Effective Recovery and Their Business Subsequently Falter and Fail.
It is wisest to begin by listing all your office equipment and trying to work out what you would do if each item was suddenly taken away from you. In the case of a flood or a fire these items might still be in the office, but will be effectively useless. In the case of theft the office equipment could very well be completely absent.
Individual Responses to These Questions on Disaster Recovery are Going to Vary Greatly.
If your office includes a telephone system, and you are trying to imagine how you would cope without that, you might decide your employee's mobile phones would provide a satisfactory solution for an interim measure. This provides an immediate solution but isn't something that can be relied on for the long term.
Once you have identified this potential weakness (which could affect sales, customer enquiries and every other branch of communications) you might want to look at more stable methods of disaster recovery.
Consult local phone engineers and find out if any of them provide an insurance service, an emergency call out service, or any other facility you may want to use in the face of a disaster recovery emergency. If you can establish a contact point and relationship at this early stage - when you are not panicking to find someone who can help your recovery - then you are in a strong position to negotiate price and services.
Move onto the next item on your list (the office based PCs perhaps) and go through the same routine as before. Establish an emergency system that could be set up to cope with the loss of the equipment: possibly using laptops, or having users sharing systems during an interim period, then consult local specialists and dealers to see if they offer any protection in the field of disaster recovery.
Organizing information like this before disaster strikes; making yourself familiar with the problems you might encounter before they happen; and preparing yourself for the eventuality with solid, sensible plans could mean the results between the success and failure of your business after a disaster.
