The Computer Shed

March 2009

Ask Yourself: "How long can your business afford to be down?"

In my last article I talked about the vital importance of having backups. But, are backups really enough? If keeping your business up and running during a disaster is important to you, then the answer is NO!

If you were living in Northeast Kansas on December 11, 2007, then you know what a widespread ice storm is like. I was personally off the power grid for seven days. How much would it cost your business to be closed for seven days? Exactly six months later on June 11, 2008, a tornado ripped through Manhattan utterly destroying both residential and business property. If your business had been in the path of destruction, would your backups have done you any good? If you had backups but they were stored at your business, they would be gone along with everything else. If you were storing your backups at an off-site location and they were safe, what would you restore them to? Backups of data won't do much good if you have no infrastructure left to restore them onto!

Backups are just one small piece of a much larger picture known as Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery, or BC/DR for short. I will NOT go so far as saying that if you don't have a DR plan, you may as well not even bother with backups. But, it's almost true!

Disasters come in so many forms that it's hard to be prepared for everything, but with some planning and procedure, you can be prepared for the vast majority of events that could impact your business. The ice storm generally just knocked out power. Once power was restored, your computers and other equipment probably powered up and worked fine. The tornado was a different story, however. If your business was hit, you were likely facing a severely damaged building including water damaged computers, copiers, phones, fax machines, etc. Floods and fires can be equally devastating. Sure, you may have insurance and you might have had an off-site backup, but what about the cost of downtime to your business?

You need to consider not only the obvious cost of lost business for the duration of the outage, but also the cost of having your customers not come back after they were forced to go elsewhere for the service you normally provide. Statistics prove that nearly half of all small businesses that are hit by a disaster of any form do not survive. Which is sad when you consider that a small amount of planning can make your chances of surviving drastically higher.

Years ago a customer of mine suffered a fire in their business during the night. They were a company that carried a considerable level of accounts receivable for their customers. Much to my dismay, there were people who were actually glad about the fire -- they were telling the owner "I guess you won't be able to send me a bill for this month, will you!" Much to their surprise, they all received a bill at the end of the month just like any other month. The reason? Every single day before she left, the bookkeeper would make a backup and put the tape in her purse to take home with her. Within 24 hours of the fire I had their computer replaced and the backup restored. Without that off-site backup, they would have lost many thousands of dollars in accounts receivable. So, the moral of that story is to take your backups off-site at the very least. But please, do more than that!

Lets assume that tomorrow morning your wake up and your 20+ employee business is gone. Your building and all its contents are destroyed. What will you do? Where will your employees work? How will you even get in touch with your employees? What will your customers hear when they call your number? Where will your incomming emails go? Even if you have backups of your data, you'll need new computers, and all new software. Where will you put the computers? Will you be able to get the exact version of all the software you were using? If you were using Quickbooks 2005, but you have to replace it with Quickbooks 2009, will your backups even work? Were you hosting your own email and your own web server? If your company does business on the Internet, what are those customers going to see when they try to visit your web site? How long will it take you to restore phone service? Did you have your PBX backed up? These are just a few of the many very serious questions you need to ask yourself if you don't yet have a BC/DR plan. And, if you do have a plan, is it up-to-date? Have you tested it? Are you sure?

The recent events of December 2007 and June 2008 should be screaming at you to not ignore this issue! I've even heard business owners flippantly say "we have business continuity insurance to pay for the loss of income". What that doesn't pay for, however, is the long-term damage done to your company. If a significant portion of your customer base were forced to go elsewhere during your outage, what makes you think they'll automatically come back once you're up and running again? Don't assume they will, and your BC insurance won't pay for that!

Finally, don't assume all disasters are caused by "mother nature". I've personally seen buildings damaged by vehicles when the brakes failed. I've seen a businesses phone and Internet cut by a careless backhoe. Sprinkler systems can be accidentally triggered causing serious damage to the interior of a building. There's no end of ways that disasters can occur!

I implore you to take BC/DR seriously. Very seriously. If you need help establishing a plan, testing your existing plan, or just need help to fill in a couple missing pieces, call me.

-Farren