In “Strategies for Minimizing Downtime by Managing Change,” Sungard makes a case that the best disaster recovery plans are often well conceived but poorly nurtured. The reason is a lack of resources. This whitepaper uses statistical data from a Forrester research study to prove the point that only a small percentage of organizations adhere to the proper standard of annual testing and continual updates of their disaster recovery strategy.
Simply put the issue is indifference. Disaster recovery is about what might happen and when operational matters in the here and now need to be addressed then the dollars and manpower will flow to the need. However that could be a costly mistake if an organization suffers an outage and doesn’t have a disaster recovery plan that has kept pace with the changes in the data center. For optimizing continuity, time and money need to be allocated for the management of three distinct disciplines:
- A continual update of the recovery process
- Maintaining the staff for test and recovery
- Building in the expertise to handle the recovery
As noted most organizations do not have the means to handle this additional process and expense so the answer is in outsourcing. Besides minimizing the potential losses from a disaster an outsourced solution can also provide other value added benefits to the day to day operations. In reviewing this whitepaper you will get a sense of how to minimize downtime and manage the disaster recovery lifecycle.
