A Disaster Recovery Plan - (pt.4)

Concluding our series on Disaster Recovery, as a business owner, you need to ask … what constitutes a disaster to my company?  You have to define a disaster in the context of your business.  Would you consider it a disaster if a single component, something as small as a barcode printer for example, quits operating? Is it a production killer if your customer database is inaccessible for a day?  Maybe you can limp along without these functions for a while, until they can be repaired on a non-emergency basis.  Perhaps though, you need all aspects of your network fully operational at all times, 24/7.  The level of your need will determine how comprehensive your disaster recovery plan will be, as well as the costs to maintain the plan.

As I discussed previously, the minimum disaster recovery program that any business, and for that matter any individual, must have is to perform backups on a regular schedule.  As an extra measure, the data and applications storage facility should be geographically distant from the business location.  It is the first line of defense in recovering from a system crash or network outage.   The more sophisticated the network and the more dependent upon that data a business is, determines the level and cost justification of a recovery plan.

A disaster recovery plan is like an insurance policy for your business.  You know the need to be insured from flood, fire and theft; you need to be insured against systems failures.  A comprehensive disaster recovery plan will get you back to work, whether that plan is to have a replacement barcode printer on hand or the plan calls for complete implementation of a systems and application restart coupled with downloads of the entire database. A disaster recovery plan is an investment in your business.

The simplest Disaster Recovery Plan is to have a comprehensive Service Level Agreement (SLA) with a reputable Managed Service Provider (MSP).   It is cost effective, especially in terms of time saved by you and your staff, allowing you to focus on what you do best … building a profitable enterprise.