An Automated Disaster Recovery Solution Is The Lynchpin To A Viable Business Continuity Plan

By Jerome M Wendt, DCIG LLC

"Business Continuity" and "Disaster Recovery" are two aspects of IT and business planning and process management that no organization can afford to get wrong. So it is somewhat disconcerting that a recent article reports that the majority of businesses do not yet have a disaster recovery plan or business continuity process in place or, if they do, they do not regularly test it. But of greater concern is that many users still fail to understand the differences between business continuity and disaster recovery and how these processes should be individually implemented and managed.

The lack of understanding about these two processes was brought into focus by a recent blog that appeared on the Storage Monkeys' website. The challenges that users face according to this blog is that vendors have a proclivity to refer to any type of IT mishap as a "disaster" and that once this occurs they need to begin a "disaster recovery" exercise using a "business continuity" solution. Mixing this terminology is resulting in users becoming confused about the two terms and even prompted the blogger to educate himself about the differences between "business continuity" and "disaster recovery".