Business Continuity vs. Disaster Recovery: What’s The Difference?
You know the saying: “a failure to prepare is to prepare for failure” – but are organizations taking this old mantra quite as seriously as they should? Indeed here at Procurri, we are often invited into businesses to provide Third Party Maintenance services once an incident has occurred and outages have already been experienced. Yet the provision of server maintenance should be considered even when everything is working perfectly, and here we cover two of the biggest protocols businesses should have in place.
What is Business Continuity?
Business continuity is the concept of a business formulating a plan to mitigate the effects that disruptive events may have on their operations; in order to ensure a continuation of service to their end users. It is often considered part of standard compliance management planning, and most organizations will have a set business continuity plan (BCP) in place. A BCP includes provisions for maintaining IT operations, customer service, data protection, and other legal standards throughout any periods of disturbance and can include emergency or temporary working locations, data backup provision, and bypass of standard IT administrative rights.
Business continuity plans should be tested, reviewed, and amended periodically in order to ensure that they are still fit for purpose. Usually conducted in tandem with other operational risk assessments, this may include periodic off-site testing whereby employees from various business units attend a simulated disruptive event and attempt to resume their roles without their standard IT accesses. It is critical that all areas of a business have a copy of the written business continuity plan and understand how it impacts them.
The coronavirus pandemic saw many companies enact their business continuity plans to accommodate unwell, isolating, and remote working employees; aiming to maintain their usual service levels while transitioning to a new operating model.
What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is the concept of recovering service back to standard levels and capacity after a disruptive event has occurred. A disaster recovery plan (DRP) is, therefore, the plan that is enacted post-disturbance; helping transition the business from its alternative business continuity protocols back to its standard operations.
Disaster recovery, therefore, occurs after a BRP has been executed.
How can Third Party Maintenance contribute to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery protocols?
Third Party Maintenance refers to the provision of maintenance services across servers, storage, and networking equipment by a company that is not the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) but a specialist firm. Typically, Third Party Maintenance allows for the extension of the lifecycle of assets that have passed their EOSL (End of Service Life) by an OEM; maximizing value and allowing for continued service no matter the hardware’s age or complexity.
Third Party Maintenance is considered an effective tool for combatting any service outages or disruption, as it allows for continued service that rivals the uptime of OEM guarantees. This means that it is usually provided prior to BCPs and DRPs, but the specialist technicians involved in such hardware maintenance can also offer service throughout the enactment of these measures. Procurri’s technicians, qualified to Levels 3 & 4, with knowledge and experience spanning a variety of legacy, rare, and complex configurations, can offer both remote and on-site maintenance support 24/7/365.
Want to learn more about integrating our services to ensure your chances of using a BCP or DRP are minimized, and that in the event they are needed, we get you up and running again quicker? Get in touch!
