Justifying Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Everybody agrees that having a plan for any emergency is a good idea. But when it comes to justifying and selling the systematic development of a disaster recovery program, it is often very difficult to sell that to the management level of the business you work in. The reasons why it is hard to get the funding and permission to move forward with disaster recovery are many. But for the most part, it comes down to money.



For any business to survive, profits have to be directed at making more profits. The goal of any company is to be "lean and mean" which means that funding for any internal program is hard to come by. If it was up to management, all budget funds would go to marketing, product development and distribution because those are the functions in a business that make the company more money. Any manager of an internal department like IT, Accounting or Auditing will tell you that there seems to be a resident resentment in management that they have to spend money on those functions.



If it is your job to go to management to ask for funding and authorization to develop a disaster recovery plan for the business, knowing how to preface your presentation is critical. The "why should I care?" factor is the one that will make or break your presentation. That is because next to the reluctance to spend money on disaster recovery preparedness, the second "myth" that most management teams seem to hold dearly to is that it will never happen to your business.



In a way, the misfortunes of others or small disasters that may have happened in your community or even to your business are good for your cause. In light of the widespread catastrophes that have hit almost every part of the country, the odds are that at least a work slow down due to weather or some other disaster has hit pretty close to home for your business. If you saw an emergency situation come about, it is easy to do some interviews to document that the lack of a recovery plan cost the company vital hours if not days before they could be back on their feet again.



In that way the development of a business resumption or disaster recovery plan can be compared to paying for insurance. The business buys insurance for the equipment they own and to give them funds should emergencies hit. The investment in a disaster recovery planning methodology is just as important if not more important than that insurance policy. The difference is that a disaster recovery plan can save the company a huge amount of pain and lost income because you have a coordinated, well thought out and tested plan to get the business going in the event of any emergency.



Unlike insurance, disaster recovery is always a custom fit to the business. It covers all aspects of business resumption including offsite data backups and restoration, IT systems recovery as well as plans if you lose important personnel or business property that you must have to conduct your business successfully. Disaster recovery asks the hard questions of "what would we do if..." and an answer must be found before the disaster hits.



If the justification is built on real world examples or even recent history of lost time and revenue due to a disaster, you have what you need to get management's attention to the problem. If you are well prepared to answer all questions and to walk out of that justification meeting ready to hit the ground running, your hard work justifying a disaster recovery program will pay off.



Savenet Solutions was established in 2005 and offer managed backup and Contingency and Disaster Recovery Plan (DR) solution which are secure and reliable system which can be scaled easily from a single server in a start up business to hundreds of servers in a corporate network.