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Events
Ensuring business continuity
Jonathan Sreekumaran / Mumbai
Recognising the ever-increasing need for
organisations to understand and implement business continuity planning
(BCP), Network Magazine partnered with EMC to organise ‘The
Changing Economics of Business Continuity’ at Delhi on April
29 and Mumbai on April 30. The event featured renowned speakers
like Dr Kevin McIsaac, program director, Infrastructure Strategies,
Meta Group; T Srinivasan, country manager, EMC India; and, Val Souza,
editor, Express Computer.
In his opening speech, Val Souza stressed
the need for BCP in businesses and stated that it was still a misunderstood
concept. Most people think BCP is restricted to IT and are reactive
rather than proactive in their approach to BCP. Souza drove his
point home by referring to a KPMG study, which showed that very
few Indian organisations plan for business continuance, and even
if they do, fewer still actually test out their plans.
The next speaker was T Srinivasan, an expert
on storage management practices. Srinivasan spoke about the criticality
of data and how data loss results in huge losses for an organisation.
He said there is a need to have consolidation and centralised control
over the organisation’s resources such as network infrastructure
(servers, storage, etc), that are critical for the success of BCP
practices. The need for business resumption from a remote site was
also emphasised.
EMC’s recently launched Symmetrix
DMX series of networked storage systems was showcased in the presentation.
Based on the new Direct Matrix architecture, the DMX series completely
redefines the economics of high-end storage, according to Srinivasan.
Direct Matrix Architecture ups the performance ante by delivering
a three-factor improvement in data transfer rates over earlier models,
the company claimed.
The last was certainly not the least, as
Dr Kevin McIsaac spoke about ‘The economics of business continuity’
in his keynote address. McIsaac elaborated on the fact that most
CTOs and CIOs were inadequately prepared in the event of things
going wrong. McIsaac also stated that 85 percent of US companies
altered BC/DR plans after 9/11 and that every business has to be
prepared for the unthinkable. “CIOs and CTOs need to learn
how to sell high availability and DR to the business. Businesses
have to understand the need for disaster recovery and evaluate the
risks to the business from unavailability of an application,”
said McIsaac.
Dr Kevin McIsaac |
T Srinivasan |
T Srinivasan answering queries on BCP |
Participants listening to a presentation with rapt attention
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