TMCnet
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March 2007
Volume 10 / Number 3

Florida — Disaster Preparedness and Business Continuity Planning Workshop

By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder, Disaster Prepardness
 

 

The first official Disaster Preparedness Communications Forum (DPCF) meeting was held one year ago at ITExpo East 2006. This was followed in October with our first West Coast meeting in San Diego at ITExpo West. The second East Coast meeting and workshop was held in Ft. Lauderdale on February 25, 2007. During the past year, the DPCF has evolved into a much larger group and our participating workshop panelists reflect this growth of both numbers and diversity. TMC’s Greg Galitzine also hosted a separate panel session on January 24th which demonstrates the high interest in business continuity.

The speakers for the January 25th session were:

Moderators

  • Max Schroeder, Senior VP — FaxCore, Inc.
  • Richard “Zippy” Grigonis, Executive Editor, TMC IP Communications Group

Panelists

  • Mike Emerson Senior Manager Security & Business Continuity Services, Citrix
  • Wendell Black, VP Sales, Oracle
  • Howard Lubert, Safehatch
  • Joe Gaughan, Product Manager, Iwatsu Voice Networks
  • Craig Tony, Cantata
  • Camilo Garcia, Telefonica
  • Bernardo Schneiderman, Telematics Bus. Consultants
  • Tim Himes, Arise Virtual Solutions, Inc. (formerly WillowCSN, Incorporated)

All of the session presentations are posted on the Enterprise Communications Association (ECA — http://www.encomm.org) or at (http://www.tmcnet.com/339.1) on the TMC site. Some workshop highlights:

Mike Emerson of Citrix (news - alert) opened his session with this quote by Albert Einstein “By failing to plan, you are planning to fail”. Another key point he made was “When planning for Business Continuity always plan for the worst and the unexpected — Anything less becomes a subset.” Mike also outlined a 5-step business continuity plan as listed below. Please visit one of the above sites for full details.

Phase 1 Project Initiation
Phase 2 Business Impact Analysis
Phase 3 Continuity Strategies
Phase 4 Plan Development
Phase 5 Maintenance, Testing and Audit

Howard Lubert of SafeHatch and DirectorForce covered Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and positioned SasS as the ultimate disaster avoidance model. He also reviewed how SaaS functions well as a security and compliance tool and is currently the darling of the private equity marketplace. Howard shared some impressive information that he obtained on the Interned and compiled by Gartner:




  • Software as a Service will be the business model of choice by 2008
  • The North American on-demand market will grow from (estimated) $7.5B in 2003 to $41B by 2008, a 41% CAGR

Wendell Black of Oracle (quote - news - alert) opened his presentation with this definition of business continuity: “The discipline of managing an enterprise under adverse conditions. This is done by implementing resilience strategies, recovery objectives, and crisis management plans as a key component of an integrated risk management initiative.” Source: The Business Continuity Institute. A key subject of Wendell’s presentation was call/contact centers as a hosted or managed service. Two factors he emphasized were 1) “How much data can you afford to lose?” 2) “How long can you afford to be down?” He then outlined some questions to ask vendors that are seeking a hosted solution. You definitely need to review the full presentation if your company is looking to employ hosted or managed services. An interesting addition to Wendell’s presentation was a briefWendell Black of Oracle (quote - news - alert) opened his presentation with this definition of business continuity: “The discipline of managing an enterprise under adverse conditions. This is done by implementing resilience strategies, recovery objectives, and crisis management plans as a key component of an integrated risk management initiative.” Source: The Business Continuity Institute. A key subject of Wendell’s presentation was call/contact centers as a hosted or managed service. Two factors he emphasized were 1) “How much data can you afford to lose?” 2) “How long can you afford to be down?” He then outlined some questions to ask vendors that are seeking a hosted solution. You definitely need to review the full presentation if your company is looking to employ hosted or managed services. An interesting addition to Wendell’s presentation was a briefWendell Black of Oracle (quote - news - alert) opened his presentation with this definition of business continuity: “The discipline of managing an enterprise under adverse conditions. This is done by implementing resilience strategies, recovery objectives, and crisis management plans as a key component of an integrated risk management initiative.” Source: The Business Continuity Institute. A key subject of Wendell’s presentation was call/contact centers as a hosted or managed service. Two factors he emphasized were 1) “How much data can you afford to lose?” 2) “How long can you afford to be down?” He then outlined some questions to ask vendors that are seeking a hosted solution. You definitely need to review the full presentation if your company is looking to employ hosted or managed services.

An interesting addition to Wendell’s presentation was a brief overview of the operations of Arise by Tim Himes. The homebased sales, customer service and technical support concepts have become some of the fastest-growing business segments in America. The phrases Homeshoring... Virtual Call Center... Work From Home... all describe a professional yet unique suite of Arise services using home-based professionals. The fact that these people are also spread over a wide geographic area provides for a built-in business continuity model. Arise’s operations are based on Oracle’s contact center application and they one of the largest operations of it’s type in the USA.

Joe Gaughan of Iwatsu Voice Networks (news - alert) offered excellent guidance on just what defines a “crisis” as opposed to a “disaster” and provided these examples:

• Crisis — A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
- Lose your T1/PRI/Power
- Hackers
- Server/Equipment failure

• Disaster — An occurrence causing widespread destruction and distress; a catastrophe
- Flood
- Terrorism
- Pandemic

Later in his presentation Joe emphasized that it is “More likely that risk will come from someone inside your company!” When putting your plan together you need to carefully review your internal controls, policies and procedures to be fully protected.

Craig Tony of Cantata presented a short questions and answer scenario to dispel some myths regarding IP and circuit switched communication. For example, for the question “Is IP or circuit switched communications technology perceived as a better network architecture for failover?” 70% of the respondents selected circuit switched when, in fact, VoIP is more reliable given that:

• Internet Protocol / “IP” has “survivability” designed into it
• IP Networks for VoIP are designed with load balanced nodes to avoid cascading failures resulting from partial failures
• Success is dependent upon best network design practices
— which should be a part of the strategy regardless

Bernardo Schneiderman provided us with a brief overview of the Global VSAT Forum. VSAT is an acronym for Very Small Aperture Terminal, but more simply put it describes a small satellite terminal that can be used for one-way and/or interactive communications via satellite. Combined with wireless communications, you have the ultimate business continuity communications network. Bernardo’s presentation outlines the two types of Satcom that are available and the various operators.

Lastly, Camilo Garcia of Telefonica provided an overview of the global and Latin American markets with respect to business continuity and disaster preparedness.

As evidenced from the above, the workshop covered a wide range of topics but all roads pointed back to IP and mobile solutions. Please visit the sites listed above for full details on the presentation.

Max Schroeder is a board member of theECA, media relations committee chairman, and liaison to TMC. He is also the Sr. Vice President of FaxCore, Inc. (http://www.faxcore.com)

Rich Tehrani is the President and Group Editor-in-Chief at TMC and is Conference Chairman of Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO.

 




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