n STUDY
Top Trends
in Business
Continuity
By CHRIS COSTELLO
What do hurricanes, terrorist attacks, pandemics, computer viruses, tornadoes, and hackers have in common? They can all disrupt your business operations. And depending upon the severity, each has the
potential to cripple your company if you don’t have adequate
contingency plans in place.
Over the last decade or so, the business continuity and disaster
recovery landscape has evolved substantially. We’re coping with
a wide variety of risks and threats that have emerged as a result of
political issues, climate change, and advancements in technology.
Fortunately, the development of new methods for protecting businesses has kept pace with the transforming environment.
The study annually surveys information technology executives
in the U.S. and abroad to learn more about the latest trends in
disaster recovery and business continuity. This year, 84 percent
of U.S. companies surveyed reported they
have plans in place to deal with unexpected
disruptions, an increase of more than 10
percentage points over the last five years.
We’ve seen a clear increase in preparedness, as well as shifts in businesses’
investments since we initiated the Business
Continuity Study in 2001.
So what’s on the minds of IT leaders
right now?
Clouds on the Horizon
It’s almost impossible to read a tech
blog today without coming across “the
cloud.” And that’s because cloud services
have the potential to make a tremendous
impact on the way businesses and their
employees work.
With built-in scalability, flexibility and
availability, cloud services also open the
door for new ways of storing and protect-
ing business data in a disaster scenario. We found that one in every
four U.S. companies surveyed in the 2011 Business Continuity
Study already uses cloud capabilities for contingency planning –
and another 29 percent are considering doing so.
