How the Digital Age is Transforming Work, Life, and Business
The Transformations Wrought About by the Digital Age This is the age of Smart Machines that can perform tasks that hitherto were being done by humans. Right from manufacturing automation where robots work on the factory floor to make products, to Artificial Intelligence driven algorithms that have predictive capabilities, and Big Data enabled Search Engines, […]
Material Handling – Principles, Operations and Equipment
Introduction Raw materials form a critical part of manufacturing as well as service organization. In any organization, a considerable amount of material handling is done in one form or the other. This movement is either done manually or through an automated process. Throughout material handling processes significant safety and health challenges are presented to workers […]
The Problem of Piracy and Intellectual Property Rights
Introduction: The Problem of Piracy No discussion on intellectual property rights (IPR) is complete without mentioning the problem of piracy around the world. Piracy is defined as the copying, stealing, reproducing, transmitting, and selling of the intellectual property (IP) of an individual without his or her express consent and written approval as well as without […]
Nation Branding
Nations are now becoming image conscious. This is a recent phenomenon which is very different from the “devil may care” attitude that was common in the past. Countries are now employing top-notch professional public relations agencies and advertising agencies to carefully cultivate and then improve their brand image. This was earlier done exclusively by corporations. […]
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
All products and services fail! Even the processes which have already achieved six sigma precision fail. However considering the possible sources of failures, the effects that they are likely to have and how prioritizing failure modes makes the product, service, process plan more robust. Considering possible failure modes and integrating them into the design goes […]
Imagine that you are running a small scale organization and have been in business for over five years. You have managed to streamline all processes online including purchasing, payroll, invoicing and accounting etc. It is quite likely that you will not have paid any thought to taking backup of your data on systems. Even if you have done so for a while, you may not have invested on buying an external hard disk or drive to store the backup data. In such situation, if your hard disk crashes and your IT service provider tells you that he is not able to recover the data for you, you will have lost all of the valuable data concerning your business for the last five years and the loss is irreplaceable. This happens in many places including medium and large scale organizations too.
This is where the concept of disaster recovery comes into place. Any disaster can threaten your assets including systems. The causes may be natural, manmade or accidental. The consequences of loss can be disastrous for the business. To avoid such situations, one needs to adapt good Disaster Management practice in place.
The practice of Disaster Management and Recovery solutions has largely been adapted by the IT and technology companies which are susceptible to disasters and which have critical applications supporting their business as well as their customer’s businesses. However this concept is not limited to just the IT Companies alone.
Disaster Management and Disaster Recovery focus on drawing up a methodical and detailed plan that anticipates possible risks, disasters and events and outlines action first to protect the systems and assets and secondly to recover the functions as fast as possible. A good Disaster Management plan will include all products and systems related to technology including voice and data communication systems, software, data and hardware as well as the various IT hardware, software and databases, servers etc.
Businesses like banking, credit cards, airlines and other critical systems cannot afford any disruption of services as well as loss of data, the result of which can be disastrous for the businesses. All such companies are known to invest heavily into establishing and managing offshore data backup and recovery centers or at alternate sites. Such companies ensure that they have a fool proof data backup system that is functional at all times.
Often one finds that the cost of setting up a Disaster Recovery plan in place can be as expensive as setting up complete operations. However if the systems are highly critical to running the business like credit card companies and banks, they would have no option but to invest on the recovery centers.
At this juncture it is important to note that Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are not one and the same. Though the objective is similar, there is a slight variation between the two. In the event of a disaster striking the site, Disaster Recovery aims at recovering assets, systems, data and other things and getting operations back to normal. However Business continuity focuses on getting the entire business operations or at least practical operations back on its feet in the event of a disaster.
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