Telstra Europe puts business continuity plans to the test

Telstra Europe has carried out a successful business continuity test involving the total shutdown of operations at its London Hosting Centre in London Docklands. The shutdown was conducted to test the resiliency of business continuity capabilities at its state-of-the-art hosting centre. The live simulation of a total power failure event was conducted in a controlled environment and forms part of an ongoing strategy of continuous improvement at Telstra Europe’s Docklands hosting facilities.

The tests were designed to simulate an unforeseen computer disaster or power supply failure, such as the power outages that rocked the east coast of the United States in September 2003. Assessing Telstra Europe’s ability to continue to provide voice and data services to customers without subjecting them to any downtime or disruption to their businesses in the event of such a failure.

The exercise was undertaken during the Easter weekend and involved the comprehensive testing of building generators by switching off mains power supply for periods of several hours at a time. Each test was undertaken and overseen by Telstra Europe engineers with manufacturers and contractors on site to implement support and analyse the project retrospectively.

Says David Thorn, chief executive officer at Telstra Europe: “Despite being warned in advance of these tests, not one of our customers reported any disruption to their service levels during the process. Developing good business continuity planning is essential to any company; exercising our business continuity plan with tests like this is vital to our ongoing service provision and one of the best investments that we can make on our customers’ behalf.”

Thorn continues: “Business continuity is much discussed in the industry at the moment and is something we constantly strive to improve for the benefit of our customers. In addition to offering comprehensive backup and disaster recovery services, we are constantly working to ensure our failsafe business continuity systems in order to protect our customers from lack of access to services, even in the face of a full-scale disaster. This test serves as a tangible mark of success in this endeavour.”

Telstra’s London Hosting Centre is a 100,000 square feet purpose-designed and built data centre located in the heart of London’s Docklands.  It is resiliently connected to Telstra’s UK and global networks and provides services to many of the UK’s largest companies and global telecommunications and internet service providers.  Customers can elect to have their own space in the centre or have Telstra provide fully managed hosting solutions with 24/7 on-site engineering support.

•Date: 6th May 2005 • Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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