Biggest Hurdle in Disaster Recovery Adoption: The Executive

Backup and disaster recovery are joined at the hip; they are two branches of the same tree. However, they are not universally seen as integral parts of a business model. Everyone knows about backup, you connect your device or collection of devices to an on-premise or cloud solution to ensure that all of your vital business data is safe in the event of loss. In the event of a disaster though, which can be anything from an accidental deletion, to a hurricane, to a terrorist attack, things are apparently different in the eyes of enterprise decision makers.

There are many barriers when it comes to the deployment of disaster recovery plans, but what happens if you are a backup professional who is having trouble convincing your superiors that such a scheme is necessary?

As I mentioned, backup and disaster recovery belong in the same family. That is, there is really no purpose to backing up all of a company’s important stuff if there is no plan to reintegrate it in the event of a catastrophe. And vice versa, it is pointless to implement a disaster recovery plan if there is nothing to recover. The majority of companies are mandated to purchase some form of insurance; isn’t disaster recovery similar in that it is uncertainty protection? Although governing entities don’t typically commission businesses to go out and buy disaster recovery solutions like they do insurance, the two should be viewed with equal importance.

There are many examples that show how few take disaster recovery seriously, and even fewer who go out and make sure their companies are secure. Educating those in charge of making key business decisions may have failed, or maybe backup and disaster solutions vendors haven’t done enough marketing. Whatever the reason, a disaster has the ability to severely derail any organization that lies within the modern digital enterprise, or worse. Not having a disaster recovery plan in place is the equivalent of building a business without a fire escape. It is important that the conversation switch from being solely about the bottom line to the risks at hand. Business continuity professionals would be wise to formulate clear and concise messages about the risk factors facing their organizations.

Jon Toigo, backup and disaster industry watchdog, has an idea: lie to management and tell them backup and disaster recovery is something else in order to gain funding. He says we should call it “compliance management.” Although I wouldn’t quite recommend this technique, it does highlight the difficulty in which disaster recovery professionals sometimes have in gaining support for their programs.

Just as you and I roll our eyes at our car insurance bill when it comes in the mail every month, so do many of those in control of a company’s purse at the thought of spending a pretty penny on something they will likely never use. Those in positions of power have a knee-jerk reaction at not wanting to spend money on something that produces no physical fruits. Of course, even those companies that are wise enough to deploy disaster recovery solutions hope they never have to use them. In the event that they do need them, however, preparedness could be the difference between the long-life of a digital business and its failure.

Management typically sees disaster recovery as having little or no value, and to a degree, they’re right. The only time when a disaster recovery solution earns its keep is when it is put to use, just as the only time having car insurance is worthwhile is when another car rear-ends you on the interstate. While there are no certainties that disaster recovery will ever be needed, it is an absolute certainty that human beings and technology are prone to failure. In in that lies the benefit of deploying a solution to deal with these scenarios.

Unless we can find a way to make the enterprise error-proof, the importance of disaster recovery and planning will only grow. Considering the rate at which modern business is evolving on a digital scale, its significance can go nowhere but up.

You know how they say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it? In this case, the only time to install a fix is before it breaks.