The Business Case for Disaster Recovery

By ajohnson May 8, 2008 @ 12:18 pm

In a recent ComputerWorld article, Forrester analyst Stephanie Balarous said “IT managers must still do a better job at convincing business leaders to invest in disaster recovery systems.”  She provided some great tips to build a solid business case and we’ve come up with a few of our own.

 

Stephanie’s Tips

1. “Consider disaster recovery investment as a rolling upgrade that consistently augments existing infrastructure and application investments rather than a one-time event that can be delayed.”
2. Consider non-natural disruptions such as a power or hardware failure as more common causes for declaring a disaster rather than catastrophic events such as a hurricane, flood, or earthquake.  By doing so, you paint a more realistic picture for business executives.
3. “Sit down with corporate department heads to map out how an outage – whether temporary or extended – would affect operations, customers and revenues.  From that, the managers should build a business report quantifying the risks, and what tools are needed to meet those risks.”

Simply Continuous Tips

1. Invest in a multi-purpose solution.  For example, you’re planning a server consolidation project and are evaluating your technology options.  As you consider your technology options, how about broadening the application of that technology and see if it can be used for disaster recovery purposes as well as your server consolidation project?  By choosing a multi-purpose technology like virtualization, it’s easier to convince the executive team to adopt it.  They may not approve both IT projects but at least you have laid the groundwork for making disaster recovery improvements.
2. Invest in a disaster recovery solution that can put you on a path of continuous protection.  You maybe relying on onsite tape backup as the crux of your disaster recovery strategy and have determined you need to upgrade to continuous backup and off-site redundancy.  The migration path from onsite tape backup to offsite redundancy is a huge undertaking and requires additional capital and expertise.  Choose a solution that can get you there in easy to manage increments and preferably with one vendor who can manage the process for you. 
3. Add “compliance” to your vocabulary and include it in your pitch.  Compliance is a language that executives understand, especially the CFO or corporate controller.  For example, if your company has plans to go public in the next 12 to 18 months, there are several BC/DR plans you need to have in place before the IPO.  Brush up on the regulations and include them in your business proposal.

See a tip that’s missing?  Share it by leaving a comment below.