Maximize Your Business with IT: Business Continuity Planning
Putting a data backup system into place is just the first step. In order to fully prepare for an emergency, you need to create a thorough business continuity plan. Do you have temporary office facilities secured, so you have a place to operate in the event of a fire or flood? Who will be responsible for restoring systems if your entire infrastructure collapses? Statistics show that 80 percent of organizations who do not implement a well-structured continuity plan shut down within 12 months after a major event. With a “Plan B”, you can ensure that all links in your business chain will operate smoothly if a disaster strikes.
Start your plan by calculating the cost of down time, then determine how much down time you can afford. For example, if your company brings in revenues of $10 million a year, and follows a 9 to 5/Monday through Friday working schedule, then one hour of down time would cost you about $480. That means that for every hour your business is idle due to unforeseen computer problems, almost $500 of your hard earned cash goes down the drain.
If you cannot afford any downtime at all, then you’ll need to implement 24×7 computer monitoring, and make sure that technicians are always on call to immediately resolve any issues that may arise. Although there are expenses associated with this approach, it will still cost you far less than losing hours, or even days of productivity while you wait for someone to fix your computers.
There are many basic monitoring software packages available, from vendors such as Uptime Software, IP Monitor, Chevin Software, and NetScout. These solutions can be set up to page you, or your technicians, in the event of a problem. You can even set up the paging system to alert your technicians first, then page you if the problem is not resolved within a few hours.
October 18th, 2008 at 08:08
event planning software…
Didn’t realise there was this type of information out there…