Have Disaster Recovery and IT Professionals Prepared Adequately?

The aftermath of Katrina is putting disaster recovery plans and IT professionals to the test, just trying to get computer systems in the disaster zone back up and running. Did they adequately prepare for a case like this?

In an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Alorie Gilbert says DR firms like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, SunGard Data Systems and others have been working with businesses across the Gulf Coast to try and keep their computer systems up and running, but the DR firms have found that many companies were unprepared for the disaster. For all the companies who had disaster plans, there were many more that didn’t, Gilbert says.

Gilbert also cites a study by AT&T that found one third of firms have no business continuity plans, and nearly a quarter haven’t updated their plans in the past 12 months. Seventeen percent said they've never tested their disaster recovery plans. To read Gilbert’s article, click here: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/05/BUGG0EHTR01.DTL

With another perspective, writer Lucas Mearian examines how Katrina and the resulting floods have challenged IT on the CIO.com website. Mearian says about 40 percent of the Fortune 1,000 companies aren't prepared for a regional disaster, and small and midsize businesses are even less ready, he said. And even companies that are well prepared “might not take into account a crisis of the magnitude as the one spawned by Katrina and the flooding that followed,” he says. To read the full article, click here: http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/UNID/EF03A50CE1A6526ECC257072007F3861?OpenDocument&More=Data+Management+Feature