Imagine walking into your office only to discover that there is no power! No kettle, no computers, no lights no voltage, nothing! This happened at 3am on Monday the 8th of September 2008 in the Enfield area, where DPS’s main office is based.

This was clearly a disaster since DPS provide a hostingservice to over 400 computers that meant that no one could do any work, or could they? DPS are an author of case management and accounts software for the legal profession.

When disaster recovery plans are put in place you can never really know if they are going to work until you have a disaster and of course that is often too late! Well, at 3:00:01am the DPS UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) kicked in to keep the servers running followed swiftly by the backup generators which supplied power to the servers in the DPS server rooms. This meant that when the hosted users logged on they were able to work from 09:18am onwards losing less than 20 minutes of the working day!

Scott Ridley, technical director of DPS said, “I was delighted that the efforts we had gone to in putting together our disaster recover worked well for our clients, you can’t know how good the plans are until they are tested in a real situation.”

Monday the 8th September also proved to be a day for technical glitches at the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Traders turning up for a days work at the LSE were confronted with a complete system failure. The problems are reported to be the result of a computer software glitch. Traders could not connect to the LSE system for nearly seven hours, meaning that almost a whole day’s trading was lost.

Normal service at DPS and the LSE resumed the following morning with everyone crossing fingers that these problems do not resurface in at least the next year or so!

 



By: omi

About the Author:

A data center stores all the programs, files, applications and other digital information that a business needs to have, so they may reasonably compete against businesses using the internet. If their files where destroyed, this would bring the companies production to a halt, possibly causing a crushing blow to its positive cash flow. This is why it’s absolutely critical to invest time and money in a reliable data center disaster recovery plan.

If you are already convinced that you must protect your data, then the next question is what exactly are we supposed to look for in a data center disaster recovery plan anyway?

It does not matter if you are a huge multinational corporation or a new business just entering your fast growth phase. Every business needs a first rate computer backup system.

Computer backup systems are a part of data center disaster recovery plans because they play the major role of safeguarding the pertinent data that keeps your business alive and restoring that data if a computer hardware failure occurs. Because of the importance of its function, selecting the right computer backup program is critical to your data center’s disaster recovery plan.

Listed below are several facts to consider during your search for the best computer backup system:

Protection: How many levels of safety does the program have? Does it have a proper administrative login procedure? Can it keep your files intact in its own “vault” so they cannot leak out, get misplaced, or become erased? Determining what the program’s security system can and cannot do is vital in making a selection. The program you want to choose must be capable of top-rate security.

Ease of Access: Even though you’re backed up files have to be secure, at the same time they should be easily accessible. This encourages frequent updates and simplifies documentation procedures. An accessible system boosts the businesses efficiency, allowing more time to work on other important issues and responsibilities.

Storage Space: Storage pace is always a big issue for online computer backups. Even a small mom and pop business can have an amazing amount of data that needs to be stored. It’s vital to know all your storage options and the limitations of your online computer backups, so you can confirm if it can, in fact, handle all or your valuable data.

Ease of Use: It isn’t a must-have requirement, but an easy to understand and operate program is a big plus for a number of reasons. A simple but effective program will be operated, verified, backed up, and given quality control checks more often. This minimizes the risk of file recovery disaster and increases the likelihood of a full recovery from computer crashes.

Dependability: Another important point to look for is if the program can store and restore your data completely when asked too without having to jump through any hoops? You should make sure it is easy to restore your data.

Don’t include yourself as one of the many businesses that do not pay enough attention to their data center disaster recovery plans. Neglecting to check if your computer backup system is up to restoring a file recovery disaster is going to be a painful experience when you most need it.

At all times you have to remember that depending on which computer backup system you select, it will make or break your data center disaster recovery plans. So be sure to take your time and pick wisely.



By: Randall Christian

About the Author:

 

Over the past 3 months DPS have signed contracts for four further hosting clients. Birds Solicitors, Meldrums, Gordon Young and R J Osbourne add to DPS’s hosting base and increase the number of clients that use their software and systems remotely.

So what is hosting and how does it work? Hosting is the process by which software that is traditionally run from a desktop PC is run over the internet in virtually the same fashion. All that is required is broadband internet access to the DPS data centre – other than that, users go about their work in exactly the same way. This allows firms to capitalise on not only a wider variety of software, but also more advanced versions of hardware. Hosting ensures that software is kept up to date while the host carries the burden of keeping hardware performance checked and maintained. In addition, the need for IT staff and expertise is removed to the hosting provider. This is beneficial for firms as they can use the same software as much larger competitors offering high levels of client service without the major upfront costs.

Disaster recovery is becoming a bigger issue for every firm and the DPS hosting service offers this as a by-product. When disaster recovery plans are put in place you can never really know if they are going to work until you have a disaster and of course that is often too late! On the 8th September 2008 at 3:00am all the power was cut in part of the Enfield area where DPS’s offices are based. At 03:00:01am the DPS UPS (uninterruptible power supplies) kicked-in to keep the servers running and at 3.02am the backup generators fired-up to supply power to the DPS server rooms. That meant that when the hosted users logged on they were able to work from 09:18am onwards losing less than 20 minutes of the working day!

So what do hosting clients think of the DPS service? Ron Prior, Senior Partner at King Prior Solicitors based in Gravesend and Rochester said, “You have to consider that IT is the backbone that a business is built on.

I now have the time to manage my business with peace of mind because the systems that we all depend on are contracted to be fully managed!”

For more information please visit DPS Software



By: Eleanor Howell

About the Author:

For companies that work with computers, no matter the degree, it is imperative that disaster recovery solutions be analyzed and implemented.  Without a service such as this, if an IT system were to lose data, regardless of the reason, there would be no system in place for full recovery.  This means if a computer system were to crash, be damaged by fire, water, or something else and all the company information on that computer lost, without using disaster recovery, the company could easily fail.

After all, business computers contain all types of information.  In addition to operating systems and software used for running the business, the computer would also contain irreplaceable business and customer information.  For instance, company financials, sales records, taxes, and employee records would be gone along with customer information, vendor numbers, invoices, contracts, and much more.

Today more than any other time in history, disaster recovery solutions should be a mandate for a company to succeed. While the concept is not that old, the number of business owners now using some type of outsourcing or in-house disaster recovery is substantial.  Business owners need to take extra precautionary measures to protect the two greatest investments they have – the business and the customers.

The average amount of money a company loses every hour that a computer system is down is a whopping $78,000.  With such a huge impact on the bottom line, it is easy to see how quickly a business, especially a smaller company would go under.  In addition to problems caused by natural disasters or accidents, there is also the risk of sabotage.  Because this is so serious, experts estimate that 50% of all businesses now have disaster recovery solutions in place.

To determine the exact disaster recovery solutions needed, a business owner should meet with a disaster recovery specialist who would look at the computer system, the type of data, and potential risks.  From there, the appropriate type of system would be recommended.  The goal would be to have a system implemented that would allow the business to run seamlessly and ensure continuity while going through the restoration process.

The following are the most common situations in which data is lost, emphasizing the value and critical natural of disaster recovery solutions.

* Tapes that have been tampered with

* Accidental dropping of a storage device

* Incorrect hard disk drive formatting

* Firmware deformity

* Logical failure

* Disturbance of the semiconductor



By: Kurt Duncan

About the Author:

Any type of call center should make disaster recovery planning an important part of the business.  Before the doors are even open for business, this type of plan should be developed.  Initially, trying to develop such a plan for call centers, especially those that use the automatic call distribution system proved a serious challenge but with hard work and brainstorming, new ideas were discussed and plans developed.

Any call center without a disaster recovery planning system in place should have one implemented immediately.  To begin, professionals who create such plans would come in and do an assessment so procedures could be outlined.  From there, general responsibilities would be summarized to help determine the different actions required for monitoring recovery plans, making modifications, getting approvals, and then overseeing operations.

With disaster recovery planning, specific individuals and a director would be assigned.  These people would each have specific tasks for getting operations within the call center back up and running should a disaster occur.  The professional would also help determine the amount of time required for recovery and ultimately, create a master plan that would be taught and then used by the appropriate people within the organization.

Some of the specifics associated with disaster recovery planning and call centers is to have a plan of action for everything affected.  For instance, backup considerations would include detailed guidelines for choosing and using the best backup strategy for the call center, as well as systems and other components of the operation.  Take fire as an example.  With disaster recovery planning, a process would help determine the best type of fire suppression system, the areas of the call center where the system would installed and even protocols for preventing fire in the first place.

Disaster recovery planning would also involve loss of power.  Obviously, the building itself but more importantly, the computer systems must have some type of redundancy in place so if power were lost, there would be no downtime.  Vital records, recorded phone conversations, and other documentation would need to be stored in a secure method and then be retrievable quickly in case of disaster.

A call center would also need physical and logical security measures in place for disaster recovery planning.  This means having someone on-site, 24 hours a day to monitor and control the comings and goings of visitors but also security for computer systems, documentation, and so on.  Disaster recovery planning is serious business and something that a professional should handle.  This way, nothing is missed and the call center is fully protected.



By: Kurt Duncan

About the Author:

Unplanned downtime—Power Outage, Acts of God, Fire, you can name them small and large but all cost your company revenue. Preparing to recover your voice system can be intimidating and costly until hosted IP PBXs.

Here are some best practices to help your organization meet its Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) as it applies to your Voice applications.

1. Highly Reliable Telecommunication Carrier Infrastructure

Most providers will center their presentations around Disaster Recovery solutions based on what to put on premises for back up and redundancy. This is all in an effort to eliminate single points of failure. Before mitigating single points of failure at your location it is important to assess the resiliency and redundancy of your telecommunication provider’s network. Is it redundant? Does it have single points of failure? How many soft switches do they maintain? Are their switches set-up to be geographically diverse? In a properly architected Hosted IP PBX model that is built for redundancy, (multiple switches at many locations with live failover) you can almost assure 100% inbound call capacity.

2. Where is the Call Control (Inside or Outside your building)

If the call control is maintained in the building than imagine the limitations. Someone needs to be in the building, someone needs to call a PBX maintenance person, then the typical two hour call to the local carrier, and then wait until the numbers are re-routed to your desired hot-site.

Lost time means lost revenue and added customer frustration. For many for have experienced this situation in the past it is not too hard to imagine

The ability to maintaining call control out of the building and using a network model as described above can immediately satisfy most of the telecommunications continuity needs. But the real value is giving the company or the IT department maximum control over the telephony infrastructure. With this added control you NEVER miss a call. Allow users to reroute their calls to cells phone, home office numbers, and recovery sites or wherever you choose and most importantly whenever you choose.

3. Component Redundancy.

Vendors will stress this point. While it is critical to have properly architected on-premise redundancy but in regards to telephony, buying twice as much equipment still does not protect failures outside your building. In a well planned hosted model, with the right network architecture, as describe above, will by design mitigated most single points of failure with NO NEED to buy extra hardware eliminating the customer from the responsibility and the cost to secure their infrastructure.

4. Ability to Work Remotely.

If an event precludes workers from working in their usual offices such weather, illness, family issues, or a regionalized disaster. Remote office features allow your employees to work from home comfortably while not incurring extra costs to your company. Your customers will not realize your employees are working from home since they will not change their calling patterns (dialing and receiving calls from the same numbers as they did prior to the disaster). Your managers will also have the ability to monitor what their employees are doing just as if the employee was working from the office (call stasis monitoring, call reporting, etc).

5. Consider This… Two plausible scenarios with a hosted service like Alteva’s that will change the impact any disaster has on your business.

Your sales team is the life blood of your company. The T1 goes down to your building and you are told it will take 4 hours to get back up. In a customer premise on-site PBX, the customers dialing your phone number will receive a fast busy signal. However with Alteva this is not the case. With Alteva, your sales team is still getting calls because the call control is not in the building. All calls are being answered by the auto attendant then as your customers enter in their extension they are routed to a cell phone that is simultaneously rung with your staff office phone. Your customer does recognize an outage and your company does not recognize any revenue loss normally associated with a phone outage.

You have a fire in the building and it is a catastrophic fire. You have a lot of work to do to rebuild and get the company back on its feet. Because you have chosen Alteva service, during the fire your calls were still being answered by an auto attendant. You decided to have your calls routed to another number and it happened instantly. Within two days you had your people working from home. Your voicemails were intact, your people were sent new phones and they just plugged into their high speed home connections. Of all things you had to deal with, because you choose well by choosing Alteva, the phones were the least of your headaches.

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By: Guy Yasika

About the Author:

Emergencies happen within a business. That is something that is inevitable. You never know when an entire system is going to crash or another disaster may come about. You have to be prepared for these things. If you’re not, then everything will be chaotic. No one will know what to do. In other words, everyone will be running around asking each other, “What do we do now?” And no one is going to have an answer.

What is a disaster recovery plan?

A disaster recovery plan is that protocol in which your employees follow when a certain disaster comes about. You have to evaluate everything that could go wrong within your business and have a recovery plan for each one of those situations. Since not one situation is the same, there has to be a protocol for each. From there, your employees have to study it and know what to do immediately. This means they need to memorize. There are many disasters that do not allow time for someone to pull out a manual and read what needs to happen. They have to act immediately.

But why have a disaster recovery plan in place? You should have one in place because you need to conduct business in the best manner possible for your customers. Your customers expect seamless service no matter what, so you have to try to make things as convenient for them as possible. If you don’t, then you risk losing their business.

Your disaster recovery plan will include dealing with data loss during a natural disaster, dealing with a system meltdown, power surges, and so much more. It depends on what sort of business you are in as to what kind of plans you use. Just make sure that you cover all of your bases and that you also have a master plan so that you can take care of something that may not have a plan. You just never know what could happen.

Statistics

Statistics have shown that businesses with a disaster recovery plan are amongst those that recover better. Those who have experienced some sort of disaster that lasts for more than 10 days will never recover financially. 50% of those companies without a disaster recovery plan will spend so much time making up for lost cash that they will most likely be out of business in 5 years. That is not something you want to have to deal with. The cost of an outage that lasts only a few days is already bad enough. Contracts can be broken, credibility can be lost, and even future customers will never be acquired. These are extreme losses.

So take these statistics to heart so that you know why it is you need a disaster recovery plan. Not one more business needs to go out of business due to an outage, so you need to be on top of things. You need to realize that anything that prohibits you from carrying out your business practices can do irreparable damages. Your customers expect for you to be there for them whenever they need you. There is nothing more frustrating to them than trying to resolve an issue that you can’t resolve because of an outage. If their request is not fulfilled, then they may suddenly become your competitor’s newest customer.

This should be enough to convince you. It is much easier to come up with a disaster recovery plan than to have to deal with a crisis blind. Imagine your entire business being shut down due to something out of your control. Now imagine sitting there with a thousand questions flying at you about what to do.



By: A. Nutt

About the Author:

Within the past few years there have been many different types of natural disasters across the world. Whether it is a tornado, hurricane, earthquake, tidal wave, flooding, wild fire, tsunami, or even a volcanic eruption it affects us. It may affect us in our personal lives such as our homes, loss of a family member or friend, or more. But it can also affect business or franchise owners which in turn will affect that business or franchise owner’s personal life. Don’t think that it won’t happen to you, because in reality it very well could. So, as a business owner you should have a plan and be prepared for any form of disaster recovery you may encounter.

First of all you need to have a plan for any kind of disaster you may encounter in your geographic area. It is important you all of you employees know the plan and how to execute it. You will want them to know certain measures that need to be taken. For example if you live in Florida and get hurricanes you first need to protect your windows by boarding them up, you also need to cover anything that can be damaged if water gets to it (like important files, computers, and such), you also need to protect any type of loss you may encounter if you lose power. You need to do this ahead of time because when you are in a rush and in the situation it is hard to make decisions on a whim.

You also need to have a recovery plan. You and your employees need to know what will be done after having experienced a natural disaster. If not you will be wasting time as you and your employees try to figure out what to do.

You should create an employee contact list of all employees. This way you can check on your employees after a natural disaster and figure out if any of them need assistance. You will also be able to figure out who can make it into work and who can’t as you try to put your business back together.

You must get good insurance. You will want you insurance to cover property damage to cover any costs related to building damages. You will also need it to cover any loss including inventory you may have encountered to do loss of power or structural damage. You will also need enough to cover the costs of your flow of business being interrupted. You may have to close for a few days or longer to get your franchise back open and going.

Lastly, keep back up’s of anything that is important like documents, client lists/information, accounting information, and other things of that nature in a different safe place.

Just remember that anything can and will happen, it is important to plan for the worst. That way it won’t be so bad, whether it is a little or big natural disaster, and you can keep your franchise business successful!



By: Samantha McCartney

About the Author:

Data can be restored immediately to either the original server or an alternate server. Restores can also be redirected to an alternate physical location if the original office is no longer available. The server disaster recovery solution lies in having devices and technologies available which allow us to restart the vital information systems in a shorter time period than the estimated critical. These mechanisms, and all the associated plans of actions, are known as data disaster recovery.

Why should I have a data back up and recovery system!

By not having a data center disaster recovery plan, you are quite simply, putting your business at risk; don’t take chance with your vital data. Would you leave any other aspect of your business to chance? Not really. Always be prepared for a natural calamity or any disaster, don’t leave any if’s and but’s, leave no stone unturned when it comes to backing up your important data.

Care should be taken while selecting a data disaster recovery services. The reason being your computer backup systems are the core piece of every data center disaster recovery plan. That is why your computer backup system must posses the ability to accommodate online computer backups for the most efficient protection.

Have a back up of your important programs, files, and applications as your priority. For the best protection it is imperative that your computer is backed up. Back up your data to an online server. What will your software systems do to automatically and quickly get your users back online? Data disaster recovery plays its vital role here.

How do I find the best data recovery services?

You can begin the work of finding the best data recovery expert by asking people around. Check with your colleagues to find who their data recovery services provider is. If you have already short-listed some experts, the next step is to check their experience in the field. Prefer to choose a service provider who has a minimum five years experience in the line. Also, find out his record of accomplishment for performance.

Always identify the risks to critical business information that may not be addressed by current disaster recovery plans; Optimize the value of the current backup and recovery infrastructure. New or improved processes to enhance overall disaster recovery capability are advisable. Resort to a reliable online Data Disaster Recovery. Bank on cost-effective remote backup and data disaster recovery solutions.



By: Kirthy Shetty

About the Author:

Natural disasters like fires, floods or hurricanes can strike at a moment’s notice and can affect business continuity in a major way. Disaster recovery has become a big part of business planning and many businesses have plans for relocation, collocation of important computer services and outsourcing crucial business functions in the time of an emergency.

When disaster strikes, many businesses turn to telephone answering services to provide phone coverage during emergency situations and power or phone outages. This is critical when businesses rely on their phones to keep in contact with customers and can lose business if there phones are down for even a short amount of time. Telephone answering services that provide disaster recovery are offering businesses a valuable service and are insuring that business will continue when disaster strikes.

If a company’s phones are out of commission for whatever reason, they can be routed to a call center so they can still have their phones answered and meet their customer’s needs. While a business may have to temporarily close its brick and mortar location due to a disaster, their business can continue to function through working phone lines. Call center services often have redundant phone carriers and satellite phone lines along with power backup so that their phones are never out and they remain unaffected by power outages, phone outages and natural disasters. They can instantly take your company’s phone calls and take messages, handle customer service operations and provide technical support when you can’t be at your office due to a disaster.

Disaster recovery services insure that crucial telephone operations are still up and running no matter what the contingency. If you absolutely need to have your customer service operation in gear twenty four hours a day seven days a week and losing it for even a few hours would cause you to lose profits, having a telephone answering service provide you with disaster recovery solutions can be crucial. You can make sure that all your order taking and order processing functions are still being carried out despite the conditions at your brick and mortar location. Plus, your phones can be answered by a live phone answering service and your customers can be updated on the status of your business and you can still receive vital messages no matter what the situation is. Disaster recovery is truly a valuable service that telephone answering services can provide and can insure business continuity no matter what disaster may strike.



By: Kurt Duncan

About the Author: