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More than half of CIOs lack a formal disaster recovery plan

54% of companies across Europe do not have a formal disaster recovery (DR) plan to cover all their existing IT infrastructure, and 18% do not have a formal DR plan in place at all. These are two of the findings to emerge from an independent Pan-European survey commissioned by Unisys.

The research highlights the risks and costs facing CIOs when considering the impact technology investment has on their business. Three real challenges for the CIO were highlighted: finance (cost), security and governance. However, the research also revealed that CIOs are leaving their companies dangerously exposed by not taking sufficient action to address these challenges. The survey found:

* That 67% of CIOs find it difficult to calculate the cost of losing data.

* That 77% of CIOs said they cannot quantify the financial impact of taking servers out or adding servers into their existing IT infrastructure. This means, for example, that they would be unable to calculate the benefits of consolidation and thus miss out on an opportunity to reduce costs.

* In terms of testing DR plans, nearly 30% of CIOs admit they do not test their DR plan even for mission-critical technology or are unaware if this plan is being tested.

"This begs the question as to what is 'mission-critical'?" asks Bernard Donnelly, technology consultancy services manager, Unisys Africa. "With the increase in corporate governance, directors need to respond to regulations, or they will find themselves liable. "The research suggests that too many CIOs are not checking what is going on in their organisations, and they are not examining their IT infrastructure closely enough. Most companies do not really analyse the value of their IT systems; too many servers, for example, are operating at under 30% capacity and companies need to use technology to its full potential."

Tony Lock, chief analyst, Bloor Research, comments, "It is apparent that many organisations have not yet managed to comprehend the value that their IT infrastructures hold in business terms. Very many organisations are totally dependent on their IT systems to operate a number of critical business services. It is essential that these systems have business continuity plans appropriate to the needs of the business.

"Disaster recovery is all about people, process and technology working together to ensure that service levels are maintained at the levels needed for the business to continue to operate. It is vital that companies find the time to understand what they need to protect and how this can be achieved. Experience has shown that standardisation can play a pivotal role in keeping IT and business operational in times of stress." CIOs can collaborate more effectively with their CFOs by supporting change in their culture, systems and processes to achieve their business objectives. Such change could be based on a process and system strategy that provides the following:

* Enterprise-wide global information.

* Consistent definitions.

* Realtime access.

* Adaptability to business structure changes.

* Cost-competitive infrastructure.

The following checklist includes some of the questions CIOs could address in order to prepare themselves for any process of change:

* What sort of assessment do you undertake?

* Do you have a business continuity plan?

* Is there a disaster recovery capability for your mission-critical systems?

* Is this disaster recovery capability tested on a regular basis?

* Do you have an overall availability target for your operation?

* As you have established your disaster recovery capability, have you used consolidation as a means to create a more reliable environment?

* How many servers are there in your company?

* What level of utilisation do they run at? (if 10% is the average, why not 90-100%?)

* How do you propose to increase this utilisation?

* What is the current number of users and the expected number of future users (do they have a plan to match the company growth strategy?)

* What is the upgrade path for security patches and service pack plan for the operating systems?

* The Unisys survey methodology: 200 telephone interviews were conducted with CIOs or their reports and CFOs or their reports in UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Netherlands. All individuals interviewed were from organisations employing 500+ people.

Bernard Donnelly

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