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DR/BC Consulting
In conversations with our clients, we find that most CIOs and IT Directors have low confidence that, if they had a disaster TODAY, they would be able to recover in a manner that meets the expectations of the business – whatever those expectations might be. Some organizations have never performed a rigorous Business Impact Analysis and Disaster Recovery planning based on this. Other clients have done this work in the past, but their plans are out of date and don’t reflect the current IT infrastructure nor the current needs of the business. Some clients have done much technical work to improve data protection and recoverability, but don’t have a way to map these capabilities back to the expectations of the business. Other clients know what they’d like to do for DR, but are unable to maintain funding sufficient to build these capabilities.
Varrow offers consulting and technical services to help our clients meet the Disaster Recovery expectations of the business. We have an approach which drives the business to set rational expectations, given IT’s resource constraints – and services to ensure that IT gets the most out of the money they already spend on DR. In every case where we’ve done this, our approach has improved the alignment between business expectations and IT capabilities for DR.
During our Business Impact Analysis process, we work collaboratively with IT and the functional leaders of the business to set appropriate recovery priorities and objectives. This establishes recovery objectives that are cost justifiable based on the business impact of a disruption. Our approach greatly reduces contention, and makes this a very positive and proactive discussion of business requirements and IT capabilities. In many cases, we find that this becomes a great learning exercise for both the business leaders and IT, where they develop a better understanding of the way critical business process rely upon applications, data and IT infrastructure.
Our Baseline Assessment and Gap Analysis evaluates the ability of the current IT infrastructure to meet the recovery requirements established through the BIA, and identifies key gaps and risks which would threaten business operations if a disaster were to occur today. Then we establish a clear RoadMap for getting from where you are to where you need to be, over time. This is typically a multi-phase process that may span a few budget years, and that incrementally improves your recovery capability over time, until the business requirements are fully met.
Our technical solutions for Virtualization, Storage, Data Protection, Data Replication and Remote Access enable us help fill gaps in these key strategic areas, establishing industry-leading capabilities for true IT resiliency.
We also assist our clients with developing fully documented and testable DR plans to ensure that they are always prepared to recover in the event of a disaster.