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Small Favors: Technology Advances SMBs' BC/DR Plans

What’s the best-case scenario for getting back to business after a worst-case disaster? If all of your business data and IT resources were destroyed, how long would it take to restore mission-critical applications, and then full, IT functionality? How current is the data in your most recent backup?

These and related questions lie at the heart of a critical, but often underfunded and under-resourced, concern for SMBs. We first polled InformationWeek Analytics readers from small  and midsize businesses on this subject back in January 2008; we revisited our survey in May 2010. Key changes: 62% have business continuity/disaster recovery systems in place in 2010, versus 55% in 2008. Centralization has increased, as today 52% say they have one main HQ and no branch sites, compared with 44% in 2008. We’re backing up to tapes that are taken off site less often; in 2008, 63% cited this method as being in use, vs. 47% in 2010. Online backup service use is up 10 points this year. One head-scratcher: The number of respondents who say their organizations are accountable to one or more government or industry regulations fell in every area, sometimes dramatically. Given the state-level laws that have come on the books since 2008, this seems like a bit of wishful thinking, even if many respondents are from smaller companies.

Of course, putting a DR plan in place and testing it properly costs money, and that’s tough to come by nowadays. Fortunately, the introduction of new technologies like deduplication, continuous data protection (CDP) and cloud storage, and the maturation of others, like server virtualization, have made effective DR accessible to a wider swath of organizations than ever before. And, strategies for disaster recovery planning reach beyond the IT department to include emergency notification, human resources, public relations and other non-IT disciplines. In this report, we’ll zero in on the process of matching disaster recovery products with your business continuity objectives. If you have no plan, we’ll help you get started. (R1770910)