Disaster-recovery planning is a necessity. But of all the tasks IT performs, DR is one of the most abstract and least testable-and that's saying a lot. In short, you're being asked, "What can we do to ensure continuity of service if something wiped us out?" The number of caveats to that question are astounding. "How much of my staff is available?" Unanswerable-you're planning for the unknown. "Are our bank and suppliers still around?" Who knows? The list goes on and involves elements of risk management, business-continuity planning and other complex undertakings. To focus on IT'S piece of the puzzle, we asked an array of DR service providers to tell us how they would back up NWC Inc., our fictional widget maker, so we could resume business quickly should our corporate headquarters go dark.
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