Disaster Recovery isn’t the same as business continuity
The difference between business continuity and disaster recovery is that the former is a business activity, as its name indicates readily enough, while the latter is a technical activity.
Despite business continuity being something the front office should worry about, these programs often get fobbed off on the IT department. But what does IT know about the business and vice versa? In most large companies, there are entire departments filled with analysts who stand between IT and the business for precisely that reason. The job of these analysts is to translate business needs into computing terms which the technology developers and operators can understand. Conversely, the analysts also explain IT constraints to the business. IT has no natural understanding of the business; rather information technology stands as a vital support function of the business.
But once IT has a system in place, they know how to run and maintain it. With the specifications in hand, they can rebuild it. With guidance from the business they understand which systems are high priority and low priority. The IT department can recover data from tapes, equip and maintain alternate locations. Well managed IT departments have built in disaster provisions into all their systems, or at least all the ones the business judges indispensable and for which the business is happy to bear the costs of system redundancy.
Disaster recovery includes, among others, core activities such as real-time data back up, provision of high availalibity networking & services, and alternate location maintenance.
Disaster recovery, even in the preparatory stages, does not include analyzing business dependencies, managing roles, or deciding who will do what and when. Disaster recover primarily concerns itself with rebuilding systems quickly on alternate servers. It also concerns itself with providing alternate facilities with desks, PCs, printers and phones where people can gather and do their work.
Disaster recovery is about infrastructure for the business, not about the business itself.
Copyright 2008 Vincent Poirier
