Business Savvy Continuity Planning - Are you ready?

What would happen to your business if tomorrow your building burned down or there was a major catastrophe here in your city? Do you have a plan on how you are going to keep your business open? To some businesses, that occasional tape backup, is the extent of their business continuity planning, but is that enough to open your doors back up tomorrow, within a week or ever?

True business continuity planning requires top down support, both in understanding the business value and the financial costs. If management isn't going to underwrite the costs of developing, testing and maintaining a business continuity plan, then it's doomed to failure.

One way to look at business continuity planning is in terms of the value it provides a business, outside of just disaster recovery. During the analysis phase, of continuity planning, one can identify potential risks with current network infrastructure that could cause business interruption, like poor power protection. Or minimum equipment configurations to determine what, in the case of a recovery, kinds of equipment are needed. Knowing what data is being backed up and how long it would take to recover the data in a useable format.

The analysis phase alone has a lot of value in starting a business continuity plan. The question is, are you ready to start?