Strategy, Not Technology Key For Disaster-Recovery Business

"Disaster recovery and business continuity is driven by business issues, not necessarily technology issues," said Joe McNally, director of performance management and enterprise infrastructure for the Ameritrade technology group. "The biggest challenge is getting business processes back on line."

McNally was one of the more than 500 system administrators, vendor executives and consultants at the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Conference on Wednesday and Thursday in New York. The event was sponsored by CMP Media's Wall Street and Technology.

McNally's comments echoed those of many speakers who stressed the importance of process over technology. While technology plays a huge role in any disaster-recovery and business-continuity plan, solution providers must focus on creating processes that allow clients to easily access plans, backup and recovery systems, find employees and communicate with them, and identify top-level managers in charge of continuity and recovery, attendees said.

"The main obstacle in putting together a strong plan is solid integration," said Gary Layton, vice president of business continuity services at Computer Associates International, Islandia, N.Y. "We must recognize that business continuity is the ultimate knowledge-management exercise."

But for many companies, business continuity is an exercise in futility.

Prior to Sept. 11 60 percent of Verizon's top customers said they had business-continuity plans, according to Dennis Elwell, executive director of business recovery and continuity services at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. After Sept. 11, half of them said those plans were inadequate, he added. "The biggest thing we and our customers learned from Sept. 11 is to have a comprehensive business-recovery plan."

There is a handful of high-margin products and technologies associated with disaster recovery and business continuity. But many businesses, even those directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks, aren't looking to invest in strategic technologies, said Larry Tabb, vice president of the securities and investment practice at TowerGroup, a Needham, Mass.-based research and advisory provider to the financial services industry. They're looking to secure and strengthen existing infrastructure, he said.

"Everybody's talking about efficiency and doing more with less," Tabb said.

Another reason companies aren't jumping into new technologies is that much of what they already have worked beyond expectations during the disaster, panelists said.

Belinda Wilson, global solutions manager for business-continuity and high-availability solutions at Hewlett-Packard, said operational problems generally account for 80 percent of technology and product failures.

"The challenge is to make sure technology is supported with processes that are followed through on and updated," she said. "What we learned from the disaster was that a lot of workflow logistics were missing. You have to continue working on the processes from beginning to end."

Despite cuts in general technology spending, management is looking to spend more on security, recovery and continuity initiatives, panelists said.

"Money is more available today because the events of Sept. 11 woke management up to the fact that a disaster did happen, and God forbid, it could happen again," said Bernard McElroy, vice president of high availability services at AT&T. "High-availability and recovery services are more important to executives than ever."

Some large customers, panelists said, are willing to spend money on expensive mirroring and high-availability solutions. But solution providers, who are well-aware of how the recession has affected their customers, should gauge the importance of a customers' data through a discovery period. The most important data can be clustered, mirrored and ported to high-availability servers, while secondary information can be backed up on less-expensive silos and tape drives.

"Try to understand business recovery in terms of what's needed," HP's Wilson said. "Take into measure how long [a customer can afford to be down, what type of data can be lost. Not every element requires a high-availability solution."

Panelists also said more end users will start outsourcing security and other services and turn to managed service providers to monitor and maintain their networks. Clients will also seek highly customized solutions to fit their needs.

There are also less complex solutions that end users found helpful or mission critical during the Sept. 11 disaster at the World Trade Center.

Bridget O'Connor, vice president global architecture and engineering technology and head of global business continuity planning at Lehman Brothers, said about 6,000 Lehman employees were displaced from New York after the disaster. The company used Citrix technology to tie remote offices to the main systems, providing employees remote access to in-house and public sites to update contact information, and used Cisco's voice-over-IP phone systems to communicate in offices without traditional phone service. Lehman also heavily relied on RIM Blackberries and e-mail.

"The key to our success was we had solid infrastructure," she said, adding that the infrastructure was centered on strong communications platform and an accessible continuity plan.