Business continuity plan saves bookshop's business
A business continuity plan was set up just five months before a power cut destroyed Art of Performance’s data as its server was shutting down; the plan has saved an online bookshop’s business
This is a small story as disaster stories go, but it illustrates well the value of planning for disaster. It also shows how various pieces in the business contiuity puzzle come from different companies around the world (brace yourself: Quite a few of them will be mentioned). Now: U.K.-based Art of Performance produces a Web site and various e-books based on the Alexander Technique fitness programs. The business lost all of its data in the power cut, but was up and running eight hours later thanks to a disaster recovery plan based on Toronto, Canada-based Asigra’s online backup and recovery software. The back-up system supplied by Miami Beach, Florida-based Falcon IT via Northampton, Northamptonshire, U.K.-based Smartways uses disk-to-disk online backup and recovery software that creates a full daily backup, which is stored in an offsite location. Before Falcon IT installed Asigra’s Televaulting software five months ago, critical data was only occasionally backed up manually on to rewritable CDs.
Roy Palmer, director of Art of Performance Web site services, said, “The monthly fee for the backup is negligible for the business return. The security of our marketing collateral, e-zines, invoices and video files is ensured now that we have the backup and restore technology in place.” Asigra has a pay-as-you-go licensing system, so that clients pay only for the accumulated compressed data their customers need to back up and vault offsite. This allows service providers to tailor their prices for customers depending on the capacity of data storage required, regardless of how many users there are and without any hardware or software license costs.
