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Five Steps to Evaluating Business Continuity Services

A do-it-yourself approach to business continuity has its advantages but isnt right for everyone.

Major BC service providers also see a growing need for data center space to address customers’ needs. Case in point: In July, SunGard acquired VeriCenter, which brought seven data centers to the table.

4 Don’t forget emergency notification systems.

During the LaSalle Bank building fire, Smith says the most valuable business continuity tool “by far” was the automated call system. Key IT people, facilities managers, security directors and the key business managers throughout the building were automatically notified of the emergency and where to report.

“We get them all in the room, and everyone has to execute their biz continuity plan. They used the automated call system to call all their people and tell them to go to the secondary site to restore servers and other things to process from another location the next morning,” Smith says. “We worked throughout the night and called every two to three hours to touch base. Between that, groups talked amongst themselves to work toward recovery.”

Emergency notification systems can use many different means of communication—phone calls, text messages, e-mail—to contact employees, vendors or other critical personnel.

While the Big Three business continuity service providers don’t offer their own emergency notification systems, they do support outside systems with their service. SunGard, for instance, supports Paragon software, which can be offered as a managed service.

Other players include Strohl Systems’ LDRPS software, Seattle-based Varolii and Verizon business services, which just announced a managed service offering for emergency notification.

Smith prefers the same simplicity with a notification system as he does with his BC planning tools. “Although [emergency notification systems] may have slick bells and whistles, I have found that you don’t need them,” Smith says. “You need a system that will call a lot of people all at once and have them call into a central conference call number.”

He also suggests having an automatic phone forwarding system through your phone company. That way, clients whose only contact is an office phone number can be rerouted to an employee’s cell or home phone.

5 Use caution when outsourcing business continuity functions overseas.

Because of terrorism and natural disasters typically not seen in the United States, such as tsunamis and monsoons, companies should take caution when outsourcing backup, recovery and business continuity operations offshore. Some popular outsourcing countries may not have the recovery capabilities found in the United States. “A Third World company doesn’t have the recovery capabilities that we do [in the U.S.],” Smith says. “As you outsource [abroad], you increase your risk of significant disruption.”