Playbook: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

A recent survey by CA Technologies shows that businesses are losing billions of dollars through IT downtime and a poor disaster recovery planning. For SMBs, it’s even more difficult to recuperate after a loss, so IT service providers have a major opportunity here to offer disaster recovery services and business continuity services.

The survey found that:

• North American businesses are collectively losing $26.5 billion in revenue each year through IT downtime and data recovery. The average annual loss for an SMB is $55,000.
• The average SMB suffers 10 hours of downtime per year.
• During these periods, when business critical systems are interrupted, the average SMB’s ability to generate revenue is reduced by 29 percent.
• Post IT downtime (i.e. when IT systems are up and running), there’s an additional delay of 7.5 hours per year at each firm during which time data is still being recovered.
• In this post-outage period when data is being recovered, company revenue generation is still severely hampered, down by an average of 17 percent.
• More than 50 percent of respondents did not have confidence in their disaster recovery plan.

“The ROI is much higher than people realize,” says Steve Fairbanks, VP of product management for data management business at CA technologies. “There is a major opportunity for service providers to present these numbers to their customers to show what is occurring out there.”

The lost revenue numbers are significant, and your customers will likely be shocked. Once they are on board with developing a DR strategy, use the resources below to help devise a plan that fits your clients’ disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

Knowing how much a data breach can cost your customers will help them understand why they need your DLP services. (June 13, 2011)

Even with the rise of online, disk-based, and cloud storage and backup solutions, tape is holding its own with SMBs, albeit in a new role. (January 06, 2011)

Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB's) can benefit considerably from a simple but effective risk management program. (November 10, 2010)

Whether for disaster recovery or business continuity, planning for unexpected data loss is critical for SMBs. Good thing there are options for every budget. (July 01, 2008)

Not sure what the plan should look like? Check out this collection of disaster recovery templates. (March 01, 2011)

The way you handle an unforeseen event—natural or manmade—has everything to do with your ability to get back on track and satisfy your customers. (January 26, 2011)

While CDP is becoming increasingly popular with SMBs, weigh its advantages and disadvantages with your clients' specific business needs in mind. (September 29, 2010)

Small businesses continue to face challenges creating effective backup and disaster recovery strategies. Now improvements in remote backup solutions and disaster-proof LAN storage are rewriting the backup plans for many SMBs. (June 23, 2010)

Testing backups and ensuring recoverability must be an integral part of business continuity. (May 18, 2010)

(July 01, 2009)

When you want to put three hard drives in the space of two, a drive cage like iStarUSA’s BPU-230 can make it possible. And, since this model has a tray for each drive, you can install either 3.5- or 2.5-inch drives in the unit. (June 12, 2013)

The virtual datacenter provider is offering SMBs two types of recovery-as-a-service solutions: one for active cloud customers and one with need for cloud-based recovery. (May 16, 2013)

MX Release 8.0 adds MXnetwork Redundancy and enhancements to MXcluster Redundancy to the all-in-one, SIP-based unified communications architecture. (May 14, 2013)

The deduplication storage systems and archiving software improvements are designed to offer partners enhanced backup and archiving performance. (April 18, 2013)

The continuity solution combines services from Avnet with software and hardware from IBM and Brocade. (April 17, 2013)

Private and public cloud services are available to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. (April 12, 2013)

The BDR provider’s Partner Portal offers support, management, and training resources. (April 09, 2013)

The backup and disaster recovery specialist reaches out in support of its multi-national partners and customers. (April 03, 2013)

The backup solution provider’s Hybrid Appliance uses a company’s existing hardware and the STORServer Console to provide a diversified backup scenario. (March 19, 2013)

Designed to provide resellers with a Recovery-as-a-Service offering, CP&R offers pay-per-use pricing. The launch comes on the heals of a broader product realignment. (February 19, 2013)

When you want to put three hard drives in the space of two, a drive cage like iStarUSA’s BPU-230 can make it possible. And, since this model has a tray for each drive, you can install either 3.5- or 2.5-inch drives in the unit. (June 12, 2013)

The virtual datacenter provider is offering SMBs two types of recovery-as-a-service solutions: one for active cloud customers and one with need for cloud-based recovery. (May 16, 2013)

MX Release 8.0 adds MXnetwork Redundancy and enhancements to MXcluster Redundancy to the all-in-one, SIP-based unified communications architecture. (May 14, 2013)

The deduplication storage systems and archiving software improvements are designed to offer partners enhanced backup and archiving performance. (April 18, 2013)

The BDR provider’s Partner Portal offers support, management, and training resources. (April 09, 2013)

The backup solution provider’s Hybrid Appliance uses a company’s existing hardware and the STORServer Console to provide a diversified backup scenario. (March 19, 2013)

Designed to provide resellers with a Recovery-as-a-Service offering, CP&R offers pay-per-use pricing. The launch comes on the heals of a broader product realignment. (February 19, 2013)

Rather than a hardware appliance, VA uses VMware Consolidated Backup and requires a downloadable VMDK file. (February 19, 2013)

Until July 1, the data backup company is offering free upgrades of IBM Tivoli Storage Manager to the latest 6.3 version. (February 02, 2013)

The managed services company releases BDR Revive, a free re-imaging tool that turns competitor appliances into Continuum Vault. (January 16, 2013)