face=Calibri> alt="Disaster Recovery Plan Template" vspace=3 align=right
src="http://www.it-toolkits.com/images/Disaster_Recovery_Planning.gif" width=90
longDesc="Disaster Recovery Planning Template" height=115>There are plenty
of partial, outdated, or ineffective disaster and business continuity plans out
there – why is it so difficult to get it right?




  • face=Calibri>Data collection: How do you collect the data for
    the disaster and business continuity plan in the first place? There is no one
    single source for everything you need, particularly if you are trying to
    integrate relevant external information such as support dates, power
    consumption, etc. Every vendor delivers this information in different formats,
    different frequencies, and different vehicles – ranging from data sheets to
    websites to release notes.


  • face=Calibri>Data inconsistency: How do you handle the
    inherent inconsistencies in data? For example, OS version numbers are often
    conflicting; vendors change their product names or renumber versions over
    time, etc. Normalizing the data (making it adhere to consistent rules and
    categories) is a cumbersome task and the accuracy and consistency of the data
    needs to be reassessed at every step.


  • face=Calibri>Categorization: If you want to categorize the
    information in the disaster and business continuity plan, you have to create
    the taxonomy (or hierarchical categorization) for the industry data. This
    alone is a significant task, there are many ways to slice and dice the
    universe of technology products, and no standards have been defined within the
    IT industry to define this information in a consistent
    manner.


  • face=Calibri>Manageability: style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Any extensive technology disaster and
    business continuity plan is a large and complex data store. A spreadsheet is
    insufficient for storing and managing rich structured data for thousands of
    products and vendors. The disaster and business continuity plan should be able
    to track and maintain the complex relationships between technologies and
    categories (parent/child relationships, one-to-many mappings, and so on).
    Developing an appropriate, extensible data store is a complex
    undertaking.


  • face=Calibri>Maintenance: style="mso-spacerun: yes"> As soon as you have finished the
    disaster and business continuity plan, you have to start updating it. The
    Information Technology industry is constantly changing, which means that your
    work is never done. If you go through a massive effort to produce a disaster
    and business continuity plan for a single business function, the value of that
    investment is lost if you cannot keep it up to
    date.

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