e-Business Continuity Planning

1. e-Business Continuity Planning Darren Walker - 2223855

2. “So your organisation has gone global, with mission-critical applications spanning time zones and national borders. You are more extended and more vulnerable, relying on not only the server in the room next to you but also on an ISP in Peru and a telecommunications company in Siberia to get your fancy web services to your customers.” How can I protect these far-flung systems from natural or man-made disasters? How can we continue operations if these disasters occur?

3. The History of Business Continuity Planning • The New Risks of e-business • Examples of failed Business Continuity Planning • Can you afford not to BCP? • Proactive Business Continuity Strategies • BC Vendors • Conclusion

4. History of Business Continuity Planning • Early 90’s BCP involved a 3 day recovery • Mid 90’s BCP expanded to include critical work processes (e.g. people & workplaces) • Late 90’s – Y2K looms - Enterprises invest heavily in BCP and disaster recovery • 1999 onward e-business integration shortens recovery expectations to zero hours • BCP becomes key factor in e-business success

5. “When web users have technical problems on a web site, 24% usually find a different, competing service; in fact, 9% will permanently shun the errant site. So leading e-commerce corporations today are targeting 99.999% availability, roughly five minutes of downtime a year, according to Forrester Research” Still only 14% of companies have an effective plan in place to ensure availability for their Internet business applications. It is no surprise that vendors are hungrily eyeing the $6.9 million that e-businesses invest to build an Internet-based nonstop infrastructure, and the $2.9 million per year they spend to run it” Forrester Research

6. The new risks of e-business • Partner/ Outsoucer unavailability (such as ISP network failure) • Operational risk (such as the recent Microsoft.com three-day outage • Security risk (such as last year’s denial-of-service attacks bringing down Yahoo) • Lack of capacity (like the spikes in business volumes incurred by Victoria’s Secret when advertising its Internet fashion show) • Application Failure ( like the full days outage last year by the London Stock Exchange)

7. Examples of failed Business Continuity • 18th July 2001, a fire in a Baltimore train tunnel destroys a major fiber-optic cable installation • Major disruption to network operations across the East coast of USA • These services were not restored for five days • Backup cables were destroyed as well – ironically they werelaid alongside the cables they were to replace in such an emergency. • eBay’s 22hr outage in June 1999 that cost them losses of $5.7 million dollars • These services were not restored for five days • failure to build a redundant, scalable web architecture

8. Can you afford afford not to BCP ? - Contingency Planning Research and Strategic Research Corp. (December 2000)

9. Proactive BC strategies To ensure business continuity an e-business should: • A geographic load-balancing scheme • A duplication of Web and application servers • A synchronised or backed-updatabase • Electronic Vaulting – the quickestrecovery method - shadowing - mirroring

10. BC Vendors – bridging the gap Delivery Site Hosting Providers: What are they? • Your site goes down often, performance is not good, your ISP is unresponsive, and you don’t understand the technology. Who can you turn to? • The big three Disaster recovery/ Business Continuity vendors are Comdisco, IBM Business Continuity and Recovery Services (BCRS) • The three have the advantage of understanding disaster recovery and business continuity technologies, due to their long history with DR/BC. • Comdisco provides “a 99.98% Web presence single-site, high availabilty architecture” • IBM offer consulting expertise to design continuous architecture

11. Conclusion – Continuity will outstrip Recovery What does the future hold for DR/BC in the e-commerce world? • By 2005, more than 60 percent of large companies will invest in Business Continuity planning • BCP co-odinators will still jump through hoops to get funding • Government regulations will push e-commerce into spending more on Business Continuity Planning • AS/NZS 4000 • Internet2, a more durable, technologically consistent network • The bottom line is: • “There will be no more justifying why business continuity is important – it IS the business” • - Gartner Group

12. Thankyou Any Questions ?

13. e-Business Continuity Planning Darren Walker - 2223855 References • Gilson, V. 1999. Contingency Planning and Management Online. CPM/EY Survey 1999 [Online] Available: http://www.contingencyplanning.com/article_index.cfm?article=200 (2001 August 4) • Salter M. and Gonzalez M. 1999. e-Continuity: Planning for e-business [Online] Available: http://www-1.ibm.com/services/continuity/recovery/3486546C2705.htm (2001 August 4) • Scott D. and Witty R. 2001. E-Business Continuity: ‘You’ve Come a Long Way Baby!’ [Online] Available: http://www4.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=333271&acsFlg=accessBought (18 June 2001) • Securing future of e-commerce [Online] Available: http://www.standards.com.au/STANDARDS/NEWSROOM/TAS/2000-01/T2105F02.htm (20 August 2001) • Lindeman J. 1999. Electronic Vaulting: Facilitating the New Era of Rapid Recovery [Online] Available: http://www-disaster-resource.com/articles/99p_62htm (20 August 2001) • Walton M. 2001. E-business continuity: Get up, stay up [Online] Available: http://www.techrepublic.com