With catastrophic events in recent years such as hurricanes, fires, and other disasters, companies are reviewing their disaster recovery plans. In this post, we’ll discuss what should be included in disaster recovery planning —whether you’re simply updating an existing plan or developing one from scratch.
Disaster recovery planning is comprised of two parts: business continuity planning and technology recovery strategies. A continuity plan takes into account all potential risks that may affect your business, with a focus on how to sustain operations. You should first identify all risks and what effect they could have, then develop a set of procedures to help mitigate those effects. Companies should continually test procedures and update their continuity plans as more threats are realized.
Technology recovery strategies consider how to restore hardware, applications and data in time to meet the needs of your business recovery. As part of your technology recovery strategy, it’s critically important to keep an up-to-date backup of your data in an off-site storage location. This is invaluable for data recovery should your business location become damaged or destroyed. Once hardware is up and running again, you can access you applications and most current data.
Live Oak Bank, headquartered in Wilmington, NC, began preparing for disaster recovery shortly after Hurricane Matthew struck in 2016. Consequently, their customers did not experience an interruption in services once Hurricane Florence made landfall on the coast. With their entire operation running in the cloud, it made no difference where their physical office was located. Employees were able to leave Wilmington and work from anywhere with an Internet connection. This is a great example of disaster recovery planning that, unfortunately, was forced into action.
Cloud-hosted solutions provide easier and faster recovery of your business applications in the event of natural disasters. These applications are normally housed in hardened data centers with offsite backups and recovery procedures. This eliminates the need to restore servers and databases within your organization after a disaster occurs—all that’s needed is a computer with Internet access.
DPSI, an industry-leading computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) company, recognized the need for cloud-hosted solutions long ago. We offer a robust enterprise asset management system called iMaint as a cloud-hosted CMMS. You can access iMaint from a computer, tablet or mobile device from anywhere with an Internet connection, so it’s easy to pick up maintenance operations where you left off. A cloud-hosted CMMS like iMaint can enable a quicker, less stressful recovery for your maintenance procedures after a natural disaster.
To learn more about DPSI, our products and our unique approach, contact us today. With over 30 years of experience in the CMMS industry, we take pride in partnering with our customers to ensure long-term success. In the event your company suffers a natural disaster, rest assured we’ll do everything in our power to assist you.
