Business continuityPreparing for the worst

 Nearly three quarters (73 percent) of companies surveyed by AT&T are calling business continuity a priority in 2011, and almost half of them are seriously thinking about using cloud technology to help them deal with terrorism threats, security breaches, the problems that come when the power goes out or the weather turns extreme.

The business continuity survey results were released yesterday, and AT&T conducted its first ever London-based Network Disaster Recovery (NDR) Exercise – which the company said allowed it to practice and share its know-how in handling network and customer disruptions. Télécoms Sans Frontières, the leading international humanitarian organization specializing in emergency communications, also demonstrated its equipment and best practices, deployed in response teams to disasters around the world.

The survey shows that such preparedness is not just for theoretical threats – almost a third (27 percent) of the firms surveyed said they have had to use their own disaster plans for real to deal with such diverse threats as power outages, extreme weather events or IT failures. In major cities like London, the threat posed by natural disaster, terrorism, and security threats is never far from executives’ minds.

The survey of London businesses reveals an increasing role for cloud technologies as a way of delivering business continuity:

• Business continuity is seen as a priority for 73 percent of IT executives in the London area and 85 percent plan to invest in new technologies in 2011.
• 45 percent of executives use or are considering cloud computing as a means of delivering improved business continuity – and another 21 percent are planning to invest in cloud computing this year
• Investment in new technologies is motivated by business growth (27 percent), increasing productivity (25 percent) and reducing costs (21 percent)

For full results of the study, see 2011 AT&T Business Continuity Study Key Findings.

AT&T’s NDR exercise demonstrates its business continuity and disaster recovery services. Through simulating the response to large-scale disasters and network service disruptions, the NDR workforce test processes, skills, and technologies – improving best practice for restoring critical communications. Onsite will be a command and control center and mobile disaster recovery units designed to replicate the AT&T network. The equipment is designed to be deployed by air or ground transport.

“AT&T believes it is important to run these disaster recovery demonstrations in the field and we also take the time to understand what customers’ concerns are around network readiness and preparedness,” said Mark Francis, vice president, AT&T Global Network Operations and Network Disaster Recovery. “We’ve found that U.K. enterprises appreciate the need to invest in preparedness and are realizing that cloud computing will play a vital role in delivering this without compromising performance.”