IBM unveils growing disaster recovery business in RP

A few years ago, one of the country’s biggest banks suffered a major setback when its computer system shut down due to faulty electrical wiring. Around that same time, a company that is into power generation ran into the same trouble when one of the floors in the building where it was housed caught fire.

In an emergency situation, time becomes the scarcest resource. A company may not have time to search for the most recent back-up tape of its client list, or to process today’s payment from its largest customer.

But their customers hardly noticed. Business went on as usual. Thanks to a back-up system that was being maintained by IBM Corp.

IBM’s e-building at the Eastwood Cyberpark in Libis, Quezon City houses a data center that acts as a second facility and stores the back-up IT systems of several banks, public utilities, telecommunication firms, and manufacturing companies especially those that have enterprise resource planning (ERP). When the IT system of one of its clients shuts down or has trouble, the back-up system automatically runs due to a real-time instrusion detection device.

What is in those computers can be mind-boggling. They can contain one’s credit history, a bank’s roster of clients, and other very critical data that are too precious to lose.

Some client companies, whose businesses are highly dependent on computers like banks and utilities, have their own equipment stored at the IBM business continuity and recovery services (BSRS) center that acts as a second site facility. The cost of housing one’s own equipment at the IBM center can cost a company several millions of pesos because IBM ‘mirrors’ one’s IT system. In fact, most banks are mirroring their main frames as well as some utilities.

"The threat of an outage is very real. The loss of very important and critical data can be due to a major event such as an earthquake or a fire or can be due to a minor incident such a human error, like when someone accidentally pushes a button that deletes libraries or turns off the processor," IBM Global Service technology services manager Ella Mae Ortega said.

"The more a company becomes dependent on information technology, the more it should plan for disasters. Imagine what an outage can do for a dot.com company or one that is dependent on online purchases like Amazon.com," she emphasized.

In fact, human error accounts for as much as 68 percent of IT disasters. System failures such as hardware and software breakdowns is the second leading cause, while natural disasters, and sabotage follow.

The disaster recovery industry is big business all over the world. In fact, IBM has as its partner in Singapore one of its biggest security agency. But in the Philippines, IBM — which offers end-to-end solutions — does not have a serious competitor.

Some companies think that having a back-up file somewhere is enough. But Ortega warns that many companies realize that this is not enough when it is already too late.

Strong back-up procedures for individual systems do not necessarily add up to a cohesive safeguard for an entire enterprise. Even the smallest, easily overlooked detail can derail the best-laid plan.

For instance, offsite vaulting of back-up tapes will not help a company recover from a Saturday night outage if one’s off-site storage vendor is inaccessible on the weekend. Also, improperly labeled media can add hours to a time-critical recovery.

Most businesses today have data back-up and recovery procedures in place.

However, Ortega warns that unless a company can validate whether or not those procedures properly address one’s business requirements, the back-up and recovery investments may be far from adequate.

For example, a company may be able to bring its Web server back online in minutes — but it can still lose thousands of customer orders if the firm only backs up transaction data every 24 hours.

Without a process for continually reassessing one’s back-up and recovery procedures against changes in the business and IT system, one may find that what worked six months ago no longer provides adequate protection.

IBM’s BCRS can assess, plan, design, implement and run a disaster recovery program. Its consultant team proposes recovery techniques that match a company’s specific recovery time requirements for critical business processes. IBM also creates detailed technical instructions that are easy to understand that even a non-technical person like the janitor can do it, says Ortega. In the event of an extended IT outage, a company will be prepared with step-by-step guidelines on how to restore business operations.

The team’s experience is equally strong in IBM and non-IBM equipment, operating systems networks, databse and storage subsystems. IBM’s long experience in the disaster recovery industry has allowed it to learn the best-of-breed software back-up and high availability tools that one’s data center may already be using.

IBM’s BCRS consultants can also develop a completely new set of recover processes and procedures, or simply modify existing protocols to meet new business requirements for shorter recovery times.

No plan can anticipate every possible recovery scenario. This is the reason why IBM engages in ‘ethical hacking’ or trying to hack a system with the client’s permission, of course, to discover security related problems. IBM consultants evaluate alternative recovery actions for different types of outages and disasters that could affect the business.