Business continuity
The end of the world is not going to happen tomorrow, but there is an opinion the end of the world is not a moment but a set of events that is accompanied by local cataclysms of different weight stages, and they are happening on our planet right now. That is why we need to be ready for these events and since it is still a question when are they going to end, we have to work and get profit, do we have any other choice? But lets get serious and look on the modern company there is a possibility of the end of the world in a separate server room:
Electric power disconnection;
Partial or total equipment failure;
Water supply system or sewer system break down;
Terrorist attacks or their threatening;
Ventilation system break down;
Fires;
Partial or total building destruction;
Local conflicts;
Natural cataclysms;
Any event that results into shutdown of a service, which ensures business continuity or data loss.
In general events that make it impossible for company to function in a stable, standard for the company mode could be considered as a local end of the world or external impact that interrupts business continuity.
If company does not care about business continuity, it becomes dependent from these external impacts, which could result not only in direct losses but also to expenses connected with production and financial accounting procedures violation, loyal customer loss, deterioration of image and competitiveness decrease. Besides for situation improvement you would need to spent years and investments. Frequently referred researches conducted by Texas University gives following statistics:
85% of companies are highly and fully dependent on processing systems;
In general after six days of company work interruption 25% of profit is being lost, after 25 days 40%;
After work interruption rapid financial loss and functioning deterioration is being observed;
After two weeks of processing systems shutdown 75% of companies experience critical or full functioning loss;
43% of companies that experienced disaster and do not have plan of uninterrupted functioning do not recommence their activities and after 10 years only 10% of companies continue to function;
Therefore IT systems and services that ensure support of critically important business-processes are the most sensitive to natural disasters, accidents and catastrophes.
There are a lot of technologies, which allow business to be independent from external impacts and equipment failures:
High-Availability Clusters- have sufficient excessiveness for work continuation in a case of one of the system components failure, for example processor, hard drive or network interface card. In case of such failure, system transports work capacity to reserve equipment or even to other node. But in some cases such system would no be reliable enough. In case of complete failure of the site, where your data processing center is located, to support business continuation you need solution, which could ensure work before multiple rejection points.
Allocated Cluster differs from high-availability cluster by its ability territorially diverse cluster node. Such solution could be accomplished by availability of two sites situated at some distance from each other. In case of using allocated cluster youll have two separate data processing centers connected by high-speed transmission line. In the situation of complete failure of the site, where one data processing center is located, to support business-process continuity allocated cluster ensures work before multiple rejection points.
Reserve Data Processing Center secures continuity of your company business-processes (plan business continuity - disaster recovery) in emergency situations. This is an office building with ready-to-use IT-infrastructure, which corresponds to the clients central office by functionality. Reserve center allows customer to proceed with activities, if it is impossible in the central office. Reserve Data Processing Center allows to switch to business continuity - disaster recovery plan when company main IT center is damaged (for example after fire, natural cataclysm, terrorist attack), main IT center communications do not work, electric power is disconnected for a long period of time or irreversible data loss occurred in a main IT center.
Backup and Data Restore System is specially designated software for backup of bootable partition and important data storages, which is installed on every server and workstation. Data backup is automatic process that happen every set time lag without interruption of computer work; data status can be restored on every day/week/months depending on request. Backup of bootable partition allows in the shortest possible time (5-30 min) to restore server/workstation operability in case of software or hardware failure.
Uninterrupted Power Supply is built on the base of specially designated equipment, its basic function is to supply power to the attached capacity thanks to storage battery in case of mains electricity fall or going belong its limits (voltage, frequency). When mains electricity is in acceptable limits, system depending on building scheme, adjusts power supply, which minimizes possibility of refusal of attached hardware caused by electricity supply network characteristics overfall. Even under the complete power supply shutdown further valuable work or right process shutdown with further shift to reserve equipment is possible.
High Availability Network allows raising access level of IP-network by providing wide network tolerance. Network applications should overlap different network segments- starting from company backbone network and company and service provider boundary network and ending with provider reference network. All segments should possess fault-tolerance, which secures quick operability reconstruction after fails and ensures continuous, clear users and network applications work in such situations. Fail diagnosed in any network section, could lead to service shutdown, interruption and service level agreement for critical business applications (voice mail, e-commerce, data storage network, document management processes, exchange trade and applications that serve sales points) violation.
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Though steps directed to ensure business continuity very often are fulfilled by chaotic implementation of specially designated products and protection technologies and do not guarantee full business-processes continuity securing. Analytical approach and measures planning corresponding to business-applications criticality analysis and risk evaluation helps to guarantee business continuation and understand if implemented measures are sufficient and at the same time efficient and not excess. Since continuity is rather capacious concept and touch not only information access but also depends on its integrity and confidentiality, measures to ensure business continuity are not independent and process of business continuity securing inseparably connected with information security questions.
To secure independence from external impacts and do not overload company budget and IT structure with excess and insufficient solutions, during the stage of business continuity administration planning, organizational structure of continuity administration, directed to keep efficiency of critical business processes and applications, need to be formed. Business processes continuity need to be considered from information resources and processing methods, equipped in critical business processes insurance, point of view. Possible rejection points and narrow places need to be detected. It is important to evaluate risks from the context of all variety of demands to information security and formulate politics and concept of business continuity assurance, which would correspond with general politics, possible time lag for operability reconstruction and access. Evaluate how long we can afford to have inoperative services, which provide business information. For some company components idle as long as day would not bring big damages, but other components could bring serious damages in fraction of a minute.
During the implementation stage, while choosing continuity assurance measures, continuity assurance politics and results of risk evaluation need to be taken into consideration. Business continuity plan formulating and its regular testing and reconsideration are necessary measures. Such notions as Emergency situations plan, After catastrophe reconstruction plan, Emergency reconstruction plan are often applied. It is important to remember that these concepts are not similar and they need to be clearly classified and distinguished. Business continuation plan is oriented on business processes continuity, when other plans might deal with reconstruction of productive capacity processes, resources changes, without associating to work continuity during and after emergencies. It is also important to avoid other mistakes connected with designing:
IT-service employees very often neglect users and main departments managers survey that helps to find out, which applications are the most important for them. This results in mistakes while doing priority placing and wrong conduction of reconstruction measures. IT-service employees consider that key corporate business-applications need to be restored on the first place. In fact simplest applications might be need most of all.
Company employees have to understand that system reboot and data reconstruction is only the part of what need to be done. Restoration plans should include measures that need to be taken by primary directions managers and eventual users, which experience all hardship of critical conditions. Very often only IT-service is responsible for assuring of business continuity but as a matter of fact this is the task that should be solve by everybody.
For certain events we need to get ready in advance but we can not to foresee everything. Plan of action should be made in a way to consider possible consequences of events not specific events.
Testing the system under conditions of continuously business running is considerably difficult. It is the most efficient unexpectedly test only one of the IT-service departments, at the same time all the rest departments will proceed with their work.
For correct, effective, manageable and efficient system solution and technology selection, business continuity assurance is difficult and well balanced process. It is also very important to evaluate company IT-infrastructure readiness to accept this solution. Information access, IT services reliability and continuity take on special significance, plan out and implement valuable business continuity solution, based only on short description of some principles and building techniques independently from external impacts and IT-structure fault-tolerance is very difficult. Building of such solutions demands experience and knowledge, but you can always turn to our company and our experts help you meet the end of the world with dignity, overfulfilling production and sales plan.
Specialists of our company have all the necessary resources, solutions and qualification for professional and effective implementation of various difficulty level projects for companies of all sizes.
For any additional information please call +380 (44) 323-23-23, or write e-mails.