In business, there are many more variables to take into account. Because of the wide-open nature of most business nowadays, it is more difficult to cover all of the contingencies and for this main reason it is important that any disaster recovery plan be flexible enough to be used in more than one situation. Most businesses will not get very far in trying to predict the types of disasters that might occur and indeed most businesses don't even try to do that. The best disaster recovery plans are the ones that are able to be utilized regardless of the specifics of the disaster itself.
Disaster Recovery is actually just a very small portion of a larger plan that businesses need to have. The Business Continuity Plan (BCP) covers all aspects of a business and companies that have a very detailed BCP are more likely to do better in the long run than companies that don't think about those kinds of things.
Disaster Recovery in More Detail
So what makes a good disaster recovery plan? There are many important things to consider when creating a disaster recovery plan. A few of these very vital considerations are discussed briefly below.
Versatility: One of the oldest jokes in the book is about the person who had a contingency plan for his own contingency plan. Although it may appear to be slightly redundant, this is one area where you business should have redundancy. If an unexpected situation occurs that bypasses or otherwise renders ineffective your initial contingency plan, it is very important to have another contingency plan to turn to. Many business owners willl not like spending the necessary extra funding to create additional contingency plans, but do not forget the insurance comparison from the beginning of this article; contingencies are either annoying or a Godsend depending on what happens to you.
Flexibility: If you are determined to only have one disaster recovery plan, then it needs to be flexible. Recovering data and other potential losses in the event of a disaster is something that all businesses think about, but only a truly flexible disaster recovery plan, with no disaster specific (i.e. planning for a specific disaster) contingencies in place, will be able to truly expect the unexpected and act accordingly. Disaster recovery plans can be difficult to create, this is why it is often preferred to have multiple disaster plans for extra resillience.
Final Remarks
However you decide to go about doing disaster recovery, be sure that you understand what it is you want to recover in the event of a disaster taking place and make sure that your plan is complete in that regard.
Disaster recovery solutions enable a business to continue working in the event of fire, theft, malfunction or terrorism. By preparing for disaster recovery, your business will not lose any valuable data, configurations or time, saving you money in the long run.
By backing up data, applications, and settings continuously, to a secure location, your business will be ready for any disaster situation.
Any proven IT company can provide these services, but at what cost, and how good is it?
Since the introduction of Citrix and Microsoft's Terminal Services, it has been possible to provide these disaster recovery services at a much lower cost, with greatly enhanced security benefits.
Switch your IT system to a corporate-level, Terminal Services environment and what you get is a complete disaster recovery solution for a much lower cost than you would expect.
As well as having your data and applications held in secure data centres, your data could be continuously backed up, providing total disaster recovery. The ultimate solution is to have complete redundancy for your IT system and this involves not having any single point of failure within your IT infrastructure.
Imagine having your company's entire data, software and structure housed in two separate data centres, spread across two different ISPs, and having all your systems and data held on servers that have their own backup servers to automatically switch on, in the event of failure.
Most corporations do not have this level of redundancy, but for a fixed, monthly fee, this and more is possible for companies with anything from two uses to a thousand users.
Apart from all the mentioned benefits, you could also get the power of hosted Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Web Access, easy Blackberry mobile integration, hosted Microsoft CRM, and for the ultimate peace of mind, you can have portable security keys as used by major companies around the world to secure data, where password-only protection fails.
These systems and solutions put companies back in control of their IT, as systems are centrally managed, updated and supported from outside company offices, providing a completely outsourced solution that will save you money, instead of costing more.
Some companies get nervous by the prospect of their entire data being held offsite, but this can be the safest option as multi-million pound data centres have all the facilities to safeguard and protect your data 24 hours a day. With high-powered backup generators, security patrols and fire suppression equipment, your data and applications will be in complete safety, giving you a powerful remote system with disaster recovery to take your business to the next level.
Lee Smith has sinced written about articles on various topics from Online Dating, Internet Marketing and Travel and Leisure. Lee Smith specialises in disaster recovery. Lee Smith's top article generates over 110000 views. to your Favourites.