Business Continuity and Downtime Impact

Anything from a minor networking problem through to an unavoidable major shutdown can halt a business and it's systems. It is not enough to recover from any disaster and restore systems, but business expectations demand continuity of systems, applications and consequently of service.

The global business environment expects services to be available 24 hours, 7 days a week. Company reputation, staff time and cash flow will all be affected severely by any downtime in services or communications. To maintain a business profile in today's competitive markets, companies need to review and implement effective DR and backup strategies, protecting vital data and critical systems, administration and telecommunications.

Impact Analysis Initially discussion about the impact of system failure on business will centre on immediate losses in revenue, but the effects of business downtime are more extensive than lost transactions. Total impact needs to include operational losses, restoration costs, additional financial fees, staff wastage, lost business through disgruntled customers and missed enquiries, regulatory and legal implications and a myriad of other follow on costs. Retrieval of lost information whether it be data or online communications will be time consuming and costly and will exacerbate an already difficult situation.

Once systems go down the routine transaction mechanisms, be they automated or manual, will cease and staff will be made redundant, unable to perform their usual tasks. Service level agreements and regulatory standards will be difficult to maintain and the overall efficiency will suffer, with management forced to undertake survival level decisions.

Contingency Planning

Once a business has identified it's mission critical systems, and estimated the costs associated with varying levels of downtime, assessment of available DR and backup options needs to be undertaken, taking into account any budgetary considerations and levels of expenditure can then be determined.

Professional consultancies can assist in these determinations and will either also provide the necessary DR infrastructure, or will be in a position to make recommendations. Backups of existing data and systems need to be available and support for these technologies needs to be in place and well maintained. Training of key personnel is integral to effective maintenance of DR systems and solutions and the up front costs will be more than compensated by effective and quick recovery from any business system failure.

Telecom Downtime Impact

Communications downtime is no less damaging than data loss or any other failure in business services and the losses can be felt immediately in lost transactions. Having an off-site backup of your in-house phone system is the ideal DR solution and can be achieved often at a fraction of the cost of the original hardware system.

UK company PhonePresence provide a telecoms DR solution which can replicate all aspects of your phone system, connecting staff and customers within minutes of any failure of business communications. Customers need not be aware of any telecoms downtime as they are presented with the same menus, options and voicemail facilities they expect, and are connected with relevant staff using landlines, mobiles and voip phones as extensions.