29 May 2009

DR advice for firms

Planning for unexpected events has become even more difficult for businesses because of the vast amount of legislation that they have to abide by, one sector commentator has claimed.

Risk management, business continuity and disaster recovery (DR) are all areas that IT leaders need to address in order to ensure business operations continue to run and stakeholders' interest is protected, Norman Alesi, principal in Laurus Technologies and Vieo Consulting Group, told Computer Technology Review.

To avoid such legal pitfalls, those responsible for DR must review core departmental processes and how much each one relies upon IT services, before assessing the potential impact of data centre loss.

"However, this also encompasses stopgap operational procedures for functional business areas as they await the restoration of data centre services," the group added.

DR plans should also be regularly tested, audited and maintained.

Richard Jones, data centre specialist at the Burton Group, told SearchDataCenter.com that DR should remain a priority for firms, which may find that server virtualization proves to be of assistance in ensuring DR is time efficient and that data is recovered swiftly.