Avoid London and improve your business continuity plan
Many large enterprises and public sector organisations based in London also use co-location facilities in the same city to host their servers and store important data. For many, this makes perfect sense, after all, London is the capital, and it is reassuring to have such a vital part of the business close to hand
However, if they were to re-evaluate the location of their servers, they'd see that housing them in London lays their business continuity plans wide open to failure, according to BlueSquare Data's Robin Ellis.
A business continuity plan should be designed to ensure that whatever disaster occurs, the company will be able to operate at 100 per cent capacity as soon as possible. This needs to take into account all risks, however extreme. Despite the Home Office recently increasing the terrorist threat level to 'severe', the possibility of London being destroyed by a "dirty bomb" may appear very remote.
Yet the chances of an equipment failure or power cut are a very real danger. Clearly the destruction of its servers could stop a business from operating, but so too could a lack of server availability due to a simple technical fault. Data centres located in London have a higher chance of suffering a power cut, as the high population density places incredible strain on the existing power supply. For most facilities, this will be a test of the redundancy of their systems and their ability to keep running during a disaster. When the 2012 Olympics hits London, the added burden of the Olympic Village may tip the capital's electricity infrastructure over the edge.
For enterprises and public sector organisations that rely on co-location services, business continuity plans will be much more effective if they use a data centre outside of the M25. The population density and high profile of London makes it a prime target for a terrorist attack, so it's worth researching less prominent towns and cities. A much smaller population presents less of a drain on the local electricity grid, reducing the chances of a serious power outage.
Finally, best practice requires that even when using co-location outside of London, a business continuity plan is still incomplete unless there are a set of disaster recovery servers in a separate location which mirror the original equipment. This is needed to guarantee that there will always be a working IT infrastructure that a business can fall back on in the event of a disaster.
Whilst business continuity is something that all large organisations review on a regular basis, many don't give it the consideration it deserves due to the remote nature of most threats. However, just a couple of changes can dramatically improve the effectiveness of a business continuity plan, making it ready to face any disaster.
Robin Ellis, group commercial director, BlueSquare Data
