Harris survey examines current attitudes to disaster recovery, business continuity and information availability

A new study, commissioned by SunGard Availability Services and conducted by Harris Interactive, reveals an apparent misalignment between IT and business executives when it comes to how to limit the amount of downtime that follows a disaster. With the tolerance for downtime of IT systems rapidly declining to five hours or less by both groups, business executives are less likely than their IT counterparts to place a higher priority on disaster recovery and business continuity. The study shows that 71 percent of IT respondents identified disaster recovery and business continuity as very important or crucial to business success, versus 49 percent of business respondents.

Additionally, more IT executives (66 percent) than business executives (54 percent) feel that planning for uninterrupted information availability should be a top priority and pursued at whatever investment is needed. However, the survey reveals that IT executives are still not receiving the budgets necessary to achieve their desired recovery timeframe. IT respondents are also almost twice as likely as their business counterparts to say planning is cost prohibitive: 43 percent versus 26 percent.

The survey also found the majority of business and IT executives polled indicated that no more than five hours of unplanned downtime is acceptable—even in the event of a disaster—but there is still disagreement on the applications that have the most impact on the business and should be the priority in disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

“The funding gap indicates that IT executives feel unsupported by their business counterparts in procuring the investment needed to manage disaster planning and recovery processes,” said David Palermo, vice president of marketing for SunGard Availability Services. “IT executives may be resigned to ‘making do’ with the resources that they have, even though there are growing pressures to decrease downtime.”

System interdependencies—affecting customer satisfaction
The survey also suggests that business executives may not fully understand the interdependencies of the networks, data, systems and applications that the IT team is managing. More importantly, there appears to be a lack of understanding regarding how these complex interdependencies impact the ability to recover and the amount of downtime after an interruption. For example, business executives are considerably less likely than their IT counterparts (63 percent versus 86 percent, respectively) to think that availability of networks, data, systems and applications are very important to the success of their business.

This finding indicates that business executives may not understand the importance of back-end systems, networks and applications on a company’s ability to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction. For instance, an executive responsible for a company’s financial operations may not connect the dots between the need to provide 24/7 customer service and the IT infrastructure required to make this possible.

“Business executives may not fully understand the interdependencies between corporate processes —like CRM and supply chain— and the back-end systems responsible for keeping these critical systems available during an unexpected outage or disaster,” said Mr. Palermo. “This lack of alignment between IT and business priorities could lead to organizations protecting the wrong applications and systems, which may dramatically enlarge the impact of any disaster.”

Systems: disagreement on which ones actually impact the bottom line
When identifying which systems are essential to safeguard from disaster, business and IT executives are in agreement regarding the top four systems that impact revenue. Both groups identified e-mail, back-office applications, customer service and telecommunications in their list of top five systems that would affect the bottom-line if they were unavailable.

However, differences exist in terms of the importance given to CRM, e-commerce, supply chain management and ERP: 40 percent of business respondents ranked CRM in the top five, versus only 29 percent of IT respondents. The survey results show that business managers may be more aware of the potential impact of external- and customer-facing system outages on the business, while IT managers focus more on business impact based on system failures that happen within the walls of the organization.

“It is reassuring to see business and IT executives are agreeing more than in the past on what the most critical applications are, but organizations need to be concerned about the potential risk associated with IT managers not prioritizing external facing systems,” said Mr. Palermo. “Companies should have key decision makers from all parts of the business—operations, finance, HR, and IT—sit down together to identify a priority order for getting systems back up and running following an interruption. It is not something that should be decided upon during a crisis. All parties should work together in advance, going through a business impact analysis to define the critical systems and applications so the plan is clearly defined before any interruption occurs.”

Grading: It is a Pass/Fail situation
When asked to give their company a letter grade in terms of ability to access business critical information quickly after an unplanned interruption or disaster, approximately half of both IT (54 percent) and business executive (51 percent) respondents chose a grade of ‘B,’ showing the two groups agree that their companies are at good— but not great— levels of preparedness.

“While both IT and business executives may feel they are at the ‘B’ level when it comes to preparedness, actually agreeing on the criticality of disaster recovery and business continuity—and what systems to recover first to protect the bottom-line—is far more important,” continued Mr. Palermo. “Until the business side appreciates the inherent risk that being ill-prepared could mean for the overall success and health of the business, IT executives may continue to face an uphill battle in having the resources required to keep the critical applications and systems up and running. If a company experiences an interruption, being prepared to respond at the ‘B’ level won’t be enough—it is really a pass/fail situation. The bottom-line is information availability should be a priority for both IT and business executives.”

Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of SunGard Availability Services between February 22, 2007 and March 7, 2007 among 527 adults (aged 18 and over), including 176 business and 351 IT participants. Qualified business respondents hold director level title or above and have associated responsibilities, such as budget and staff, in business areas; qualified IT respondents hold a manager-level title or above and have associated responsibilities, such as budget and staff, in IT areas.

www.sungard.com
www.harrispollonline.com

•Date: 24th April 2007 • Region: US/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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