Management News

Protecting Against Disasters

Topic

Managing Information

Key Words

data storage, information, crisis management

InfoTrac Reference

none

News Story

Kingland Systems Corp. conducts its business via web-based financial applications that are hosted on three in-house servers. It also owns a second facility 30 miles away, housing three backup servers mirroring data in real time from the main servers. In the event of a catastrophe they can switch to the backup servers in 8 minutes.

The events of 9/11 highlighted the importance of a contingency plan for continuing business operations. Several companies specialize in business continuity planning and the development of hot sites, which are the backup facilities that house the company's backup data. Having the backup facility not only saves disaster in the case of power outages or hardware failure, but also allows companies to perform computer maintenance and software upgrades without computer downtime.

Unexpectedly, one survey found that only 12% of companies are increasing their budgets for disaster-recovery and business-continuity this year, and only 53% of companies have business continuity plans in place to continue operations in the event of a disaster. Many experts feel that a business continuity plan has never been more important.

Questions

1.	As companies become more reliant on computers to operate their businesses, they are finding that they can be completely shut down from hardware or software failure. What are some steps management can take to insure that business will continue in case of a catastrophic event?
2.	You are a middle manager in a small company that manufactures auto parts. Every aspect of the business is technology-driven - the assembly lines, customer ordering, inventory control, etc. The company has no business-continuity plan in place, and no budget allocated for one. How would you convince your company executives of the need to budget the money to develop and implement a plan?

Source

Alex Goldfayn, "Protecting Against Disasters," Chicago Tribune July 15, 2002, Sect. 4, p. 1.

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