I'd love to see a source for the alleged Gartner comment. The only verified well-known Gartner comment in this space that I know of is "two out of five enterprises that experience a disaster will go out of business in five years", from their "Aftermath: Disaster Recovery" report, dated September 21st 2001. See http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=101102

As for Double-Take's suggestion that you shouldn't wait to get a BC plan organized, but should dive right into protecting data first, that's a recipe for wasted money. Not a surprising one, since Double-Take sells data replication products, but one of the biggest mistakes I see customers making is to buy a DR solution and then try to fit it into a BC plan. They usually end up with an inferior solution, or they have to throw it away and start again properly once they understand what they are really protecting.

Do the basic BC plan first, which need not take 9 months as Double-Take claim. Then work on the various response plans, including the one for IT DR. Of course implement some basic sensible policies like backups which are stored offsite, in the interim, but don't waste time & money on a sophisticated system until the analysis is done and you have the MTPD/RPO/RTO figures.

Absolutely right. The main mistake would be to invest all your time and effort in an IT DR solution and then finding that your main sprocket supplier goes out of business and your wonderfully hardened IT system cannot google you a replacement supplier that can produce the stuff you need.

Quite topical at the moment - What happens if your office is struck by a flu virus and there is nobody available to manage all this wonderful IT?

I have been MD (that's Managing Director) of my company for the past thirty years. We started before IBM launched the first PC. Before email. Before the internet. Telex was still in use and fax was all the rage ! Book-keeping was done on paper. Invoices prepared by hand by people who could add up. We had bouts of flu and other things which got in the way of perfection, but none so time wasting and cash sucking as IT, computers and periferals. The electricity bill for all this computer junk is more than the bill for lighting the offices! We seem to need more people to get the job done by computer and internet than we ever needed before. Information might flow instantly, but it takes ever longer to find it and prepare it in garish multi-coloured charts -- everyone trying to outdo each other with their abilities in Excel or Numbers (the Apple version!) to graph those numbers, sales figures, forecasts for gods sake !!! Backups of this, backups of that. Backups of backups ! Paranoia !!

I am reminded of what I consider to be one of the more sensible comments relating to computers and information technology --- 'Junk in, Junk out' !

I'm interested - why would someone with such a disdain for technology (I'm not arguing particularly - this is merely an observation) read a technology website?

Hell, why would you bother with websites full stop?!

Or do I smell a troll?

Hmmm: you got me worried there, big Dave.

"We had bouts of flu and other things which got in the way of perfection, but none so time wasting and cash sucking as IT, computers and periferals [sic]."

Is your "business" a farm? Actually, agribusiness in East Anglia is pretty modern, so I'm assuming a Welsh hill sheep farm, or sommat. I would have imagined as an MD you'd be pretty au fait with the concept of a tool and how the efficacy of a tool relates to it its suitability for the task in hand, and the ability of its user to wield it properly.

You're blaming tools for an awful lot here, and you know what kind of worker does that?

For the low, low price of £1,000 per day, I'll come and give you a bit of advice on how to tame your IT and bring a bit of business benefit to accompany your IT costs. I mean, you'd be surprised how much easier it is to run a business with the machines doing the godawful grunt work.

(I'm perfectly aware that this is most likely a troll, but for £1,000 a day, I'm prepared to take the chance that DC is a genuine...)