When disaster strikes, it’s how you recover that shapes the outcome.
Do you crack under the pressure? Do you have the resilience to bounce back? In business, there are myriad variables at play capable of influencing the answers. Not everything can be controlled; some crises are simply insurmountable. However, in a digital age in which virtually every process from communication to commerce depends upon technology, an inability to reboot fast is a risk which must be mitigated.
For Managed Service Providers in particular – many of whom supply customers with multiple solutions with multiple complexities and therefore multiple vulnerabilities – a means of delivering business continuity when disaster hits is critical.
In-house capability to do so is prohibitively-expensive for most: constant, 24/7 readiness for a rare event a luxury that is hard to justify.
Instead, outsourcing is the answer – partnering with a professional services organisation that has the expertise and the experience to not only rescue a business in crisis but also to ensure a quiet, year-round preparedness for any unforeseen emergency.
Picking the right partner is as important as it gets.
“There are many aspects to maximising protection against events capable of harming a business, from deploying secure privacy protocols to robust cybersecurity measures – business continuity should be right up there with them, but often gets missed,” says Ken McGuinness, Head of Business Continuity at ISO-compliant unified communications professional services practice Allendevaux & Company, which helps protect enterprises all over the world.
“Not that long ago, unified communication capability wasn’t considered critical in the delivery of products and services because there was always a work-around in the event of an outage. If you couldn’t e-mail somebody, you could walk down the corridor and talk to them. Now, with the globalisation of systems and data, UC is business-critical. Those smart, integrated systems bring huge benefits but when one part goes down, the whole thing can grind to a halt.”
Prior to systems having the complexity they do today, many enterprises’ business continuity strategy was to simply have a second, identical system sitting in the background, just in case. That is now too costly.
Instead, there must be smart, lean, and agile contingencies that can be spun up rapidly: data backup and retrieval; communication network failovers; ransom negotiation; human resource management; and the right public relations approach.
“The scale of data retrieval and the speed at which a business needs to be back fully-functioning are the critical questions,” says McGuinness.
“If a primary system fails but the business has been backing-up data every 24 hours, then it is only going to lose 24 hours-worth of data. If it can afford to experience that, then it has adequate protection. But a business that is very transactional and cannot afford to lose any data at all must replicate everything synchronously. Managed service providers inherit the business continuity requirements of their customers – if that requirement is for zero data loss and zero downtime, the protection and recovery measures must match-up.”
Partly that is about having the expertise and the tools to respond when an interruption occurs. However, an effective business continuity strategy also depends upon constant horizon scanning, planning, and practising.
“That is the most important thing of all,” says McGuinness. “We help our UC business customers test their ability to withstand a serious issue at least once a year, ideally more often. Regular testing builds muscle memory for when a response is needed for real. Also, UC providers that are able to demonstrate to their customers that they are strong in business continuity are able to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Auditors the world over are always very happy to see that a business has a trusted partner responsible for that, as opposed to a finance manager picking it up alongside their normal duties.”
The threats are everywhere, of course. Cybercrime is the number one. However – perhaps surprisingly – it is anticipated in the future that climate change will sit at number two: the unpredictability of extreme weather events, such as flooding and natural disaster, capable of wreaking havoc.
Then there is the unintended impact of Artificial Intelligence to consider too.
“We are always looking to the future in order to ensure we are equipped to help our customers today,” says McGuinness. “All businesses are trying to figure out how AI is going to impact the way they work. It’s our job to help them protect against any negatives.”
So, lots of risk to manage. And when the stakes are so high, it’s easy to see why it pays to have experts close at hand.
To learn more about how Allendevaux & Co can help your and your customers’ businesses be ready for anything, click here.
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