White Paper - e-Continuity: The New Imperative

> Storage area networks: In evaluating the mar-
ket for SAN services in Europe, IDC predicts
that the availability of open storage solutions
will trigger SAN growth in excess of 100% over
the next two years.
6
> Mobile commerce: As InfoWorld magazine has
noted,“Signs are pointing to a dramatic shift
towards wireless for conducting business.”Leading
companies plan to roll out wireless strategies by
mid-2001, and mobile commerce sales are pro-
jected to reach as high as $1.8 trillion by 2005.
7
> A new generation of “thin” devices: According
to Meta Group,“By 2001-03, there will be
enormous progress in deployment of pervasive
thin devices using alternative hardware and
software to connect to the Internet.”
8
> Perceptive peripherals and applications: Further
out, smart devices and applications will be able
to detect and analyze problems or changes in
the environment and automatically trigger an
appropriate response via the Web.This will drive
rapid growth of machine-to-machine traffic,
which will further tax IT infrastructure.
As these technologies mature and are integrated
into the enterprise IT environment, they will place
new demands on those responsible for ensuring
business continuity.
II. The evolution of business continuity
In recent years, as the world has grown evermore
dependent on technology, the concepts and
methods of business continuity have evolved to
keep pace. (See Figure 2.) This evolution has been
a two-sided coin: New infrastructure and applica-
tions require an expanded continuity effort, yet
they also provide new tools and methods for
achieving continuity.
As recently as five years ago, the focus was on
reactive recovery of IT assets and operations fol-
lowing a disaster. For non-critical systems and
applications, this could mean being down for as
long as 48 to 72 hours while IT staff or a disaster
recovery vendor restored or replaced the affected
systems and restored networking capabilities.
Even for the most critical applications — such
as brokerage trading rooms or overnight funds
transfer — enterprises were willing to tolerate
the four to eight hours of downtime required to
relocate applications, data, and staff to an alter-
native processing facility or “hotsite.”
As the pace of global business quickened in the
mid- and late 1990s, this level of continuity came
to be viewed as unacceptable for business-critical
applications. In response, IT solution providers
developed approaches that focused on prevention
and continuity rather than after-the-fact recovery.
These approaches included high-availability and
fault-tolerant configurations, redundant network-
ing infrastructures, and high-availability services
that use predictive technologies and proactive
service to anticipate and resolve problems before
they affect routine operations.
During the last two to three years, as companies
have faced mounting pressure to be open for
business around the clock, they have combined a
range of technologies to enhance IT availability and
drive business continuity ever closer to the ideal of
24 x 365. These enabling technologies include:
4
’80s
’90s
’00s
Business Focus Traditional Dot.com e-Business
Requirements Restore, Recover High Availability 24 x 7, Scalable
Driven by Regulation e-Commerce Competition
Magnified by Disaster Absence of Dependence on
“Bricks & Mortar” Computers
Recovery Hardware Hardware, Data Hardware, Data,
Expectation Applications
Days/Hours Minutes/Seconds Minutes/Seconds
Decision Optional Mandatory
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Since the mid-1980s, business continuity has evolved to reflect the world’s growing
dependence on IT. Where it was once considered adequate to restore computer
operations hours or days after an IT interruption, users now expect key business
processes to be accessible on a 24 x 365 basis.
6
International Data Corporation, European Business Continuity Services: Risk as a Services Opportunity, January 2000.
7
InfoWorld, “E-commerce focuses on wireless commerce,” October 24, 2000.
8
Meta Group, Ensuring Business Continuity: e-Business and High Availability, April 2000.