Double Take Business-Continuity

Business continuity projects don't start with budget, they start with understanding the existing costs and realizing how to alleviate that financial burden. With this in mind, consider the following points when appealing to management for funds:

1. Clearly illustrate the risk by outlining the cost of downtime at your organization.


2. Differentiate the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) (how long until you are back online) associated with recovery from tape vs. other solutions like real-time data replication. Replication can enable you to more quickly recover from a disaster or system outage, reducing your downtime and ultimately the cost associated with it.


3. Consider your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) (how much data you can afford to lose) associated with recovery from tape vs. other solutions to assess your data loss tolerance. Can you afford to lose 2 minutes, 2 hours, or 2 days worth? With replication, the data you restore will be the same data you had seconds before the outage occurred.


4. Know the data protection laws that govern your industry such Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and SEC 17a-4. Explain what they mean to your business and where you are at risk.