| Mitigating the human factor | |
| “According to the Uptime Institute, 73% of data centre outages are caused by human error ” | 
Canon Philip Brady |
| Up to 60% of businesses never survive a massive data breach, in fact according to the US’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40% of small businesses never recover after being hit with a major disaster.We work with our customers to ensure that they can better manage key documentation processes and ensure they have processes in place to ensure that vital documentation is scanned and in place in the case of an emergency.
We help ensure clients in the public and private sector that sensitive information (invoices, health forms, information) cannot be copied or duplicated by unauthorised personnel. This is especially important when it comes to compliance with data regulation, which could spell disaster for an organisation’s reputation. More broadly, we are seeing these type of threats typically faced by Irish organisations as: Security threats: PwC’s 2015 Global Security Survey reveals that cyberattacks increased by 48% from 2013 to 2014. Small businesses must be able to continue operations in the event of a successful attack. They also have to ensure that they maintain information security even in the event of some other type of disaster. Human error: According to the Uptime Institute, 73% of data centre outages are caused by human error. These mistakes range from unplugging the wrong cable at the wrong time to making a minor but disastrous change in a software setting. A good business continuity plan can enable small businesses to reduce their insurance premiums. Every company should, therefore, make appropriate investments in business continuity.
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| Continuity and change | |
| “It is critically important that business continuity plans and solutions evolve with business change ” | 
Ergo Jimmy Sheahan |
| Ergo works with Irish organisations to address business continuity across multiple verticals and multiple processes. Modern business is constantly changing where business models change, merger and acquisition activity occurs and new products and services develop in order to serve ever-increasing expectations from the marketplace.Ergo with a ‘cloud first, mobile first’ mindset coupled with a leading edge catalogue of products, managed, and cloud services can dynamically respond to this ever-evolving business demand.
It is critically important that business continuity plans and solutions evolve with business change. In this New World of Work, lagging business continuity will be failed business continuity. The cloud is helping to simplify this challenge and is enabling Irish organisations to rapidly respond to changing business demands. A mobile-enabled workforce with geographically resilient cloud infrastructure delivers the foundational elements for organisations to change, evolve and scale. Ergo builds on this foundation with strong governance, service management, business process enablement technology and a suite of business applications to empower organisation with efficient and elastic business continuity capability.
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| Be agile | |
| “The days of business running and moving forward smoothly are gone, so it is necessary to focus on how an organisation is managed and agile enough to move forward…” | 
Renaissance Contingency Services Michael Conway |
| Business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) provide very significant benefits to an organisation. These extend way beyond the normal business compliance and regulatory benefits of ‘doing things well’. When BC and DR are developed and implemented as integral parts of the organisations and particularly when they are done in true alignment with the best international standards (ISO 22301) then the organisation becomes a far more resilient, structured and focused, and becomes more agile to normal bumps, knocks and interruptions.The days of business running and moving forward smoothly are gone, so it is necessary to focus on how an organisation is managed and agile enough to move forward in the normal challenging times of change.
The proper and true adoption of BC and DR and embedding the processes for this are key. Renaissance, as the leader in delivering and implementing BC and DR programmes in Ireland for many decades, has seen the organisational and commercial benefits of this approach. In the troubled times of the recession many organisations focused on mere survival but the ones with vision focused on agility. This is paying them back significantly. Regulators and auditors are actually looking at good practice and the continuity of the organisation so they have actually the best interests of the organisation in mind and are seeking to build a robust environment. We need to be more mature in understanding this and not see regulation as an imposition rather than an opportunity to do well and be better prepared.
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| A hybrid approach | |
| “…clients who understand risk, have plans and keep their continuity strategy and systems up-to-date ” |
Xterity Cloud Services (Egenera) Gerry Murray |
| Recently, we had reason to work on several projects which involved business continuity planning. The clients included well-established manufacturers, and more recent established companies amongst others. It was refreshing to see these clients considering both traditional on-premise and also cloud-based solutions. The first observation is that clients who understand risk, have plans and keep their continuity strategy and systems up-to-date. Secondly, they are open to new approaches to problem solving, but on the basis of cost and fitness for purpose of the solution. Invariably, the cost efficiencies in hybrid and cloud-based solutions have driven the technical and commercial discussions.As one of the few suppliers in this space, Xterity leverages its experience in the delivery and management of physical, as well as virtual platforms to provide client specific solutions. This means that clients, who want to use their on-premise systems and offsite systems to deliver robust continuity systems and processes, can do so within one framework rather than through multiple suppliers. This also enables clients to include a technology upgrade path within their infrastructure so that they can address issues where legacy solutions come to end of life and need to be switched out. The biggest challenge is to ensure continuity of service through a transition which put another way is dealing with a crisis albeit a managed change.
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