Back to Basics of Disaster Recovery

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Business Intelligence   Risk Management   Strategy  

What can be said about the need for Disaster Recovery (DR) that hasn’t already been said a thousand times? And yet, that being the case, why have so many organizations failed to implement DR capabilities? A decade ago, DR was quite expensive and involved, and companies--right or wrong--believed that having their data backed up was enough. However, today, there are many cost effective options available for implementing DR, and because of transaction volumes and velocities, even smaller companies would be challenged to recapture even a week’s worth of activity should their systems go down or worse be destroyed. So, once again, let’s revisit the basics of DR and explore some of the more cost effective options available in the market today.

To begin with, unless executive management recognizes the importance of DR they will never fund the effort. In his March 2011 article “Management buy-in and disaster recovery standards still major challenges”, Andrew Burton, the senior editor at SearchDisasterRecovery.com, echoed the need for upper management’s support and buy-in to DR via numerous quotes from DR professionals such as:

“Getting management buy-in for DR has always been and will likely continue to be one of the major issues” - Bob Arnold, president of the Disaster Recovery Journal

“Getting people to …

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