Plan for power outages

Most of us forget that computer systems are only as good as the electrical power that keeps them up and running. So it is especially alarming to hear that most business continuity plans could not withstand a regional outage lasting more than 7 days. A new Gartner poll found that organizations must grow their business continuity and disaster recovery strategies to make sure that they can handle a power outage lasting at least a month. Gartner surveyed 349 IT professionals from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. It found that nearly 60 percent had business continuity plans for outages that lasted only 7 days, and that most companies focused on internal IT disruptions, not regional ones.

"If you start looking at some of the events we've [experienced] over the last few years, companies must plan for events that actually take much longer to recover from," said Gartner analyst Roberta Witty said. "This is an issue [businesses] have to deal with -- it's in front of everyone's face right now."

 The survey found that continuity plans were spotty. Only half the companies are prepared to deal with terrorism-related IT outages while two thirds have plans to deal with outages caused by fire. The survey suggests companies must be prepared for quicker responses and should install incident management techniques that work. "That's what [business continuity] is about. If you don't have people to manage it, a data center is useless," Witty said.

For more on getting ready for power outages:
- See this ComputerWeek article