Disaster recovery used to be reserved for large enterprises, but in the increasingly 24/7 business world, more and more midmarket firms are finding they can’t afford not to keep things running. And high-availability requirements are growing all the time. Forrester Research estimates that enterprises have doubled the number of mission-critical database applications in the past five years. Yet many firms remained poorly prepared. A Gartner survey found that almost half of midmarket and large enterprises had relatively weak Diaster Recovery plans.

More and more companies don’t have a choice. Publicly traded companies face Sarbanes-Oxley mandates for data retention, while private companies in industries as different as the wine business and finance must meet government regulations for record-keeping and service continuity.

While Disaster Recovery planning may be more challenging for resource-strapped midmarket businesses than large enterprises, there still are basic ways to ensure a timely recovery and maximal continuity.

The first step is to conduct a detailed review of the vulnerabilities that IT and the overall business face by performing a business impact analysis (BIA). should cover what threats are likely (power outage, natural disaster, terrorism) and the possible consequences in terms of lost revenue, productivity and reputation.

The second step is to establish realistic and specific business recovery objectives. RTO and RPO requirements need to be defined in terms of risk/reward. That is, how much protection does the company really need, and how much is it willing to pay for?

IT should advise and execute, but overall responsibility for Disaster Recovery should be vested in line-of-business owners. CIOs should make a case for Disaster Recovery investment so that the business owners can go after the funding. Finding metrics to measure Disaster Recovery can be hard, but IT should at least measure the effective-ness of any solution during a test.

Once the plan is in place, one of the most crucial decisions is whether IT has the expertise and resources to implement the project or if outside help is needed. Forrester reports that most of the enterprises surveyed found that implementing a Disaster Recovery plan required more work than expected. Gartner’s Scott says a quarter to a third of large enterprises outsource Disaster Recovery, while three-quarters of midmarket firms do.

Portions of this post were derived from Roadmap to Recovery - searchcio.com

To learn more about Diaster Recovery and how you can best protect your business, contact Digital Reach, Inc. today.