{"id":3099,"date":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otava.test\/how-to-sell-it-disaster-recovery-to-your-board-of-directors\/"},"modified":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T00:00:00","slug":"how-to-sell-it-disaster-recovery-to-your-board-of-directors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.otava.com\/blog\/how-to-sell-it-disaster-recovery-to-your-board-of-directors\/","title":{"rendered":"Selling IT disaster recovery to your board of directors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DisasterIT Disaster recovery is all about protecting your data, and the cost of data loss <\/a>can be staggering. According to the Institute for Business and Home Safety<\/a>, an estimated 25 percent of businesses do not reopen following a major disaster. As a business, you spend an enormous amount of time, planning, and money into making your organization successful. But what are you doing to protect yourself against a disaster?<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s time for you to re-evaluate your current DR position, make sure your board of directors knows the above statistic and remembers to budget accordingly. The most important point to make when it comes to selling DR to your board is that they recognize the company\u2019s sensitivity to downtime, which is typically gathered from a Business Impact Analysis. That cost or impact will be different for each company, but if your application is a major source of revenue for you, it may only be minutes or even seconds that you can afford to lose. That\u2019s not a lot of time.<\/p>\n

If you have hard numbers to back up your downtime sensitivity, that will have a huge impact on your board. It will equate back to revenue, lost customers and a damaged image in the marketplace<\/a>, which is what board is most likely focused on. For further effect, show how the cost of building, maintaining and having a DR infrastructure is realized if your site has a certain amount of downtime.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll probably face concerns about these two points:<\/p>\n

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  1. How much it will cost to maintain something you might not need?<\/li>\n
  2. What\u2019s the likelihood that you really<\/em> will have a disaster that completely wipes out your production site?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These can be, unfortunately, hard to answer, because you simply never know what will happen. You could face an equipment failure, catastrophic data loss, or a power outage long enough to affect your emergency power source. All of these scenarios (as well as many more) are very likely, and given your sensitivity to downtime are probably more likely than your executive team is willing to live with.<\/p>\n

    However, with what\u2019s happening in the world nowadays it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll have much trouble selling DR to your board. Most companies are already aware of the importance of disaster recovery and allocate budgets to it accordingly. Ignorance or naivety are no longer factors in denying funds to IT departments for DR.<\/p>\n

    Once you\u2019ve cleared the hurdle of selling DR itself, it\u2019s time to propose the options you\u2019ve identified. Unless you are a sizable company, you probably shouldn\u2019t host the infrastructure yourself. If you have to look into all avenues though, determine a CAPEX appropriate for your company size and business needs, and do some research to see how much you need to fully support a DR solution yourself (this includes licensing costs, staff time and recurring training, just to name a few). Compare your results to what a service provider charges, and recommend the option that is more valuable to your company.<\/p>\n

    There are some major advantages<\/a>\u00a0to using Disaster Recovery as a Service:<\/p>\n