DRP 

Disaster Recovery Procedure.

You better hope you never do, or you might wish you had contacted us ?

What do you need:

To some extent this is dependent on the size of your organization. Companies under approximately $1M turnover can probably expect to be able to replace there hardware fairly quickly if it is Intel based, and does not require any substantial infrastructure as part of its operation, and therefore the need for a DRP plan is possibly not as important as those with a turnover in excess of $1M. At a minimum you should consider what is required  for you to continue to generate  income, invoice's and pay staff for between 1 and 4 weeks. Most of your accountants payable will wait impatiently.

For larger organizations,  the impact is more significant, and in all probably you can not simply replace your equipment with off the shelf components. This may be due to cash flow or availability, with many manufactures now not carrying stock of the the larger mini computer systems, and certainly not in mainframes. You should look at your business units and evaluate how long each can continue without computing resources and the respective impacts due to the lack of those services. Typically depending on the damage you should expect to be without full service for a minimum of  3 weeks and probably longer. It is not practical or cost effective unless you have mission critical applications and the potential for a significant loss of business to replicate the complete environment. Therefore you should tailor your requirements to provide a  minimum operating level, which will still allow your organization to operate, at a degraded service level.

How we can help:

The issue's surrounding DRP can be convoluted and complex, if your trying to optimise your expenditure, and look at alternatives or reduced business practice's while in DRP. We can help in all fields from the initial scoping through to the final testing. ( note the last step, which is often forgotten). 

With your help we would gather all the information required, from financial controllers, through business unit managers, IT managers, accounts payable, incumbent support organizations, and any external services. Prepare a high level report showing the broad spectrum of our recommended approach and time frames. This would then be modified until approved by you.

After approval  an indicative quote for any capital would be prepared, and budget approval would be sought.

A detailed Disaster Recover Procedure would   then be developed in conjunction with the individual business unit managers, with a step by step procedure including , responsibilities, timing, procedure revision guide lines, and testing strategy. Once again formal approval would be sought, and once obtained, hardware ordered, and the plan tested.

The above approach is scaled according to the size of the organization, in some cases steps maybe added or subtracted as required.

22/03/2002 06:09 PM