If the air conditioning breaks down in a hospital administration department in the height of summer, productivity starts to drop as the temperature rises. It becomes harder to stay focused on the task at hand, people get crabbier on the telephone with patients and suppliers and the “go the extra mile” motivation your organisation normally prides itself on wanes significantly. Maximum tolerable outage? A day or so, perhaps. On the other hand if the air conditioning stops functioning in your data centre, then your servers may stop functioning too. Maximum tolerable outage? For vital medical systems, perhaps one minute – if that. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Business Continuity’
What’s your maximum tolerable outage?
Monday, October 10th, 2011Employee and Personal Impacts of a Disaster
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011Although recovering servers and IT applications is an important part of disaster recovery and business continuity planning, it’s also important to take into account the impact on employees of a disaster. A company’s systems may be vital if employees are to be able to work, but employees are also how a company communicates and continues to do business with its customers and suppliers.
Business Continuity and Common Risks for Small Businesses
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011What makes small businesses different to bigger ones when it comes to business continuity? Common risks for small businesses are linked to their operations being confined to one specific sector and one geographical location. They don’t have the possibilities of mitigation available to larger, more diverse, distributed companies. Disaster can strike all of their resources at once. Accordingly, larger customers often scrutinise their small company suppliers to see whether they have an effective business continuity strategy in place. (more…)
Preparing for an exceptional event that happens every year
Monday, September 19th, 2011If the city where your business runs is hosting the Olympic Games or similar, then you’ll be facing a one-off exceptional event. As such, you may need to take exceptional measures in order to ensure business continuity. For events of this magnitude, organisers or municipal agencies often produce continuity guidelines to help avoid the worst and maintain business continuity. (more…)
Cloud Computing and Business Continuity – Have we seen this somewhere before?
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011The discussions about cloud computing and business continuity are reminiscent of similar ones a few years back about the use of software as a service (SaaS). The similarities are all the more striking following the recent outages of certain well-known cloud computing services and the questions raised about the viability of cloud computing for strategically sensitive or critical computing requirements. Like SaaS, cloud computing is hailed by some as “next practice” and beyond just “best practice”. On the other hand, unlike SaaS, cloud computing for business continuity may provide more flexibility in that it allows for dynamic redistribution of computing activity. As far as SaaS goes, you either run your application in-house or you pay an SaaS provider to run it for you, but you probably wouldn’t do both just to be able to switch between the two at the very moment any problems start. (more…)
OpsCentre goes to University
Saturday, September 10th, 2011Good business continuity continues to be both a learning and a problem-solving process. While the Business Continuity Management industry has its own experts who work on the problems and solutions on a daily basis, continuing to be open-minded about input from outside the industry can also be rewarding. For OpsCentre, our participation in the University of Wollongong Univative Program was first and foremost a way to help build and develop a positive community. What we also found was that putting strategic business questions to a group of bright, enthusiastic people unfettered by conventional business ideas can lead to both innovative and practical ideas. (more…)
Cloud Computing: Risky Business Round Table
Monday, March 28th, 2011OpsCentre will be hosting a Round Table on the 28th of April at the Vibe Hotel in Sydney; to register click here.
We will be discussing the risks associated with cloud computing with industry professionals.
To get you warmed up for the discussion have a look at this very informative clip posted by Macquarie Telecom discussing Cloud computing and the risks associated with off-site data storage.
Click here to watch the Macquarie Telecom Clip.
Business Continuity – SunGard User Group Forum 2011
Friday, March 25th, 2011The 2011 Business Continuity User Group Forum was recently announced and this short video production has just been released in which Tracey Forbes gives an overview of the keynote speaker and format for the user forum event.
Click here to view it now.
OpsCentre Round Table Event – Cloud Computing: Risky Business?
Thursday, March 17th, 2011OpsCentre is hosting another Round Table event at the Vibe Hotel in Sydney on 28th April 2011 to discuss Cloud Computing Risks.
Details have been updated on OpsCentre’s Events page and there is a link through to more information and registration.
Business Interruption – Water pipe burst evacuates 3500 from Sydney’s AMP Tower
Friday, February 25th, 2011A real life example of a business interruption incident today. A burst water pipe in the AMP Building in Sydney caused 3500 staff to be evacuated.
For the businesses without water damage, hopefully access can be restored and everyone is back to work on Monday morning. If any businesses sustained significant damage to their floor, it may be a while longer. This is an example of when having an alternate recovery site location ready to invoke may be necessary.
Read more on Sydney Morning Herald news.. http://t.co/DxhLGrO
Business Continuity Planning – More Than Just Disaster Recovery
Monday, February 14th, 2011The disasters in Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia have put BCP into sharp focus.
In this article, Allan Davies provides advice he gleaned the hard way from working through numerous disasters, and suggests that CIO’s need to think in broader terms than just IT disaster recovery. He outlines nine valuable lessons that should be incorporated into everyones disaster recovery plan.
Roundtable Event – Building Resilence in your organisation – Is it really possible?
Monday, November 29th, 2010OpsCentre is hosting a roundtable event on the 7th of December, 2010.
With today’s ever changing environment; with new technologies, environmental factors and new generation risks pose increasing threats to managers in an ever changing landscape of uncertainties. The question we pose is does resilience really exist within an organisation, and how can it be achieved
The discussion is relevant to Chief Executives, Chief Financial Officers, Managing Directors, Business Continuity Managers, Risk and Compliance Managers, and all senior executives looking to understand and identify “Building Resilience within an Organisation and whether it is actually possible” during 2010/11
More information and register to attend here
Business Continuity – Is your business ‘Recovery Ready’?
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010Do you know the answers to these questions for your organisation?
1. How would we continue to function in an extended building evacuation such as a power outage or flood in the basement?
2. Who are our most critical customers and how would we contact them?
3. What is our current IT Disaster Recovery capability? How long would it take to restore our most critical systems, applications and data?
4. Do we outsource critical business functions to third party organisations services? What if they were to fail.
5. Do our staff know how to get out of our building safely, where to go, and how do we account for them?
6. In the event of a disaster, would we need to implement manual workarounds to cater for reduced staff numbers, loss of IT systems, or denial of access to our building?
OpsCentre recommends undertaking a Readiness Assessment to identify where you are exposed and the possible impacts. If you would like assistance with evaluating the health of your business continuity program, we would be happy to assist. Don’t forget we are offering a complimentary initial consultation from which you will receive an ‘actionable’ health check report.
Click here for more information about the OpsCentre complimentary consultation.
Recommended considerations for selecting an Alternate Recovery Site
Friday, February 26th, 2010Do you need to select an alternate recovery site for your business continuity or IT disaster recovery?
In the event of a disaster, it is crucial that your organisation can transition as smoothly as possible into a recovery site and commence working on critical business processes as quickly as possible. Ensuring that an appropriate alternate recovery site has been selected is key to this smooth transition.
OpsCentre has released a succinct 2 page guide to considerations for selecting the right recovery site.
The report covers aspect such as:
- Location of the recovery site
- A list of must-have pre-requisites that every recovery site should have
- Site Security
- Technical Infrastructure considerations
- Other site characteristics to be considered
Go HERE to request your copy of the COMPLIMENTARY, OBLIGATION-FREE Alternate Site Selection Report.
Business Resilience and Agility
Friday, February 19th, 2010We are increasingly hearing about the word resilience. When speaking scientifically it refers the physical property of a material to ‘bounce back’ to its original position after deformation that does not broaden elastic limitations.
Irregular change is nothing new to modern enterprises: witness the colossal changes in technology and economies as well as social and environmental developments. We are living in a world which is constantly evolving, changing and expanding. Enterprises need to respond by bolstering their suppleness and agility. We are constantly witnessing modification as these groups create ‘virtual enterprises’ in which they share key process with other businesses, they construct infrastructures which support expansion, and create environments that sustain varied lifestyles.
Agility is becoming increasingly important as is resilience. We witnessed large spread change on September the 11th as the world was catapulted into a ‘new normal’, one of indecision and unrest. Resilient organizations bounced back within a short period whilst non- resilient struggled to re-establish, and rebuild.
Agility is an offensive strategy while resilience is defensive and refers to a means of recovery from unanticipated events. Working in a variety of different industries I believe that resilient organizations are ones which have adopted it as an attitude. It is part of their corporate culture and the product of the persona of individuals in an organization. One cannot build a durable organization on the shoulders of those who don’t embrace it. If a leader has it as a character trait then followers will more than likely follow suit as they tend to adopt similar characteristics.
Resilience begins at home and has to be sustained over time.
Have you though about the vulnerabilities and areas of weakness in your own business and how to improve your level of operational resilience to address them?