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A careful, incremental plan for disaster recovery developed over several years resulted in a successful recovery from a critical hardware failure last year for Towne Air Freight says John Loughran, the company's director of information technology.
"Our disaster recovery plan, like most companies', started out with a simple backup to tape," he says. "That goes back 10 years plus. For us and for our customers, that was not sufficient."
Companies have to weigh the costs and benefits of disaster recovery depending on their business activities and how long they can afford to be unavailable. Companies became especially alert to the importance of such plans after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.
"You figure out what your Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is," Loughran says, "It's similar to when you buy insurance: How much are we willing to spend to protect against what kind...