Disaster recovery more relevant than ever
In light of the recent flooding in the US and the UK, companies should pre-empt natural and man-made disaster by having a structure in place to avoid potentially devastating data loss.
With more and more companies relying on data as the backbone of their business, being unprepared could spell the end in the event of a flood, fire or earthquake.
The repercussions for unprepared businesses could be catastrophic.
Many US businesses are now reconsidering their disaster recovery plan but for some it could be too late.
Ceder Falls-based Phantom EFX president Jim Thompson said many businesses were taken by surprise when the Mississippi burst its banks.
"When a river comes up 6 feet higher than it ever has before, it's tough to have that foresight," he said.
"But it's probably going to happen again."
"Going through this experience [will] make those plans [more] than just part of an IT checklist."
Phantom EFX escaped the flood relatively unscathed after staff acted quickly to remove 120 computers, 80 monitors and eight servers from the danger zone.
The company did lose three high-end printers to the flood but Mr Thompson will be aware that things could have been much worse.
The latest assessment of the cost of recent flood damage in Southern Wisconsin totals $470,533,951, according to Wisconsin Emergency Management.
But while buildings can be re-built, and employees moved to temporary premises, data stored in a single place can rarely be recovered retrospectively in the event of a disaster.
One way of avoiding a situation where mission critical data is lost in a disaster is to have a suitable disaster recovery plan in place.
This ensures that critical operations can be restored as quickly and smoothly as possible, allowing companies to minimise the disruption caused by a disaster.
According to Jim Hoffer's Backing up Business - Industry Trend or Event, most large companies spend between two and four per cent of their IT budget on planning for disasters.
Figures in the same paper, published in Health Management Technology in 2001, suggested that of companies who had a major loss of computerised data, almost half (43 per cent) never re open and only six per cent survive for longer than two years.
An average of 16 inches of rainfall across England and Wales between May and July last year saw some 7,000 businesses flooded.
While a lot of focus was placed on the 48,000 homes affected, the cost to businesses contributed massively to the £3 billion worth of damage caused by the floods.
With flooding expected to be a continuing issue in the UK due to global warming affecting weather patterns, businesses should learn from last year's disaster, and those seen this year in the US.
Disaster recovery, it seems, is more than just a luxury, rather it is a necessity in a time where technology is the driving force behind business.
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