Good Practices: What it takes to be IT ResilientLike other business activities, becoming (and remaining) IT resilient requires ongoing effort. The trick to become IT resilient is to direct resources toward the right things. Like business continuity, too many people approach IT Disaster Recovery as merely a planning effort, and that's where the IT DR resources are directed..."lets document what we'll need to do when it all hits the fan." Problem is, you could be documenting the execution of an IT infrastructure that is not resilient and is prone to failure. This is not improving your resilience posture. Clearly, budgets are a real consideration when it comes to bolstering the IT environment, and you most likely can't make everything bullet-proof. But chances are that you have a budget and your environment is evolving. So you might as well integrate DR into your overall IT strategy. Here's how we recommend that you do that.
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Identify General Risk Tolerance. By identifying risk tolerance, we simply mean determining how recoverable IT environment generally should be. This does not have to be a scientific effort. But chances are, IT cannot answer this question on its own, nor should it. Ideally, a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) will shed light on the business' tolerance for IT disruption. But the BIA is just another decision-making tool. Until key decision-makers concur on how much IT disruption the organization can tolerate, it's all just a guessing game. So if the business chiefs say, "we can limp along without IT for 3 days", that's a lot different than "we absolutely, positively need to have critical systems running within hours". Getting that direction will clarify the recoverability target you should be aiming for.
Develop an IT Roadmap. There's a great saying: "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." It's true for most things and its true for IT. The roadmap is really a general approach for reaching an it strategy (so you need to think about the Strategy as well). Are servers going to be virtualized? Are we moving from a hosted environment to the cloud? Are we retaining an internally hosted environment? Sure, the strategy will change, as will the roadmap, but having the roadmap will allow you to make DR decisions that align best with the organization's overall strategy. Be Collaborative. In some circles, IT has a well-earned reputation for operating in a cylinder of excellence (a.k.a., silo). But getting out of the IT world and connecting with the business is absolutely essential if a meaningful disaster recovery program is to be established. Again, the BIA is a great way to make those types of connections, but even just the practice of reaching out to operational business units and saying "here's what we're thinking about doing, what do you think?" will bear fruit. By reaching out and asking for insights, you're likely to get honest input rather than demands that you can't meet. In the end, you're all in it together to improve the business, right? It's when you don't ask for insights that IT DR demands are made. Think about the Long-Term. Simply put, if you can't cope with something over the long haul, think hard before you do it. That applies to maintaining an IT environment, administering systems, planning, plan testing, and other activities. If you think of performing IT activities like doing push-ups, you quickly realize that you can only do so many each day. So why create a situation that requires 1000 push-ups when you can only do 100? By taking on more than you can cope with, organizations not only fail to meet organizational expectations, but they find themselves in a re-design mode while trying to maintain what's in place, and that's a tough spot to be in. |
IT DR ServicesAtlas provides a range of IT Disaster Recovery services, to include:
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