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We will find the right mix of
solutions for your business
Continuity is not about what we as a
company do, or what we have in our store, it's about what you need. Our FAST
Continuity methodology identifies your needs and our consultants use their
experience and knowledge of continuity strategies and tools to put together the
right mix for your business.
Our solutions include:
We have a range of IT recovery options for you depending
on your needs and budget. These include:
 | Cold Recovery - We provide an unprepared
system that we build from scratch when needed. Cheap but slow and you must be
prepared to loose data as it depends on the date of your last off-site backup. |
| Warm Recovery - We keep electronic backups at out
recovery site and use these to reconfigure a copy of your system. This is much
quicker than cold recovery, no tapes to load we just have to configure the
system and switch the network. You loose almost no data and the cost is
reasonable. |
| Hot recovery - We have a mirror image of
your system running ready and just need to switch networks. This is more
expensive, but you have almost instant fail over and normally loose only a
second or two of data. |
| Live-live - This is not recovery but a way of
configuring your system so that it comprises 2 active half, both capable of
running your workload. In the event of a failure on one half the other half
takes up the workload. This provides instant failover with no loss of data,
but is very expensive. |
| Assisted Recovery - This is a service that we offer where we manage the
recovery on your behalf. |
| Ship to site - This is where we ship the kit you need
to a location of your choice. This is useful if your computer room is
operational but your system is broken. Or where you have a recovery location
but don't want the expense of keeping kit on-site just in case! It's
relatively cheap, but recovery times are slow as you have to allow time for
delivering the kit to site and connecting it. |
Key Benefits
| Solution can be designed to reflect budget and recovery
time needs i.e. Live-Live is near instant failover but it's very expensive,
whereas, cold is very cheap but slow. |
| You choose the level of support to match your needs.
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| You have the flexibility to cover all possible
scenarios i.e. ship to site covers server failure as well as loss of the site. |
| We do the hard work, freeing you to concentrate on
running your business. |
| You get 1st class talent on your team, but not on your
payroll. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Working with a large UK retail bank - Completed end
to end dependency mapping, highlighting key exposures, creating a
remediation plan, secured funding, delivered new and
tested DR capability.
- Case Study 2
- Working with a Global credit card company, identified
major IT Disaster Recovery exposure that undermined recovery strategy.
Identified third party solution wrapping a recovery contract around 100+
servers to provide instant cover while longer term project was undertaken to
deliver in-house DR solutions.
- Case Study 3
- Working with pension fund assessed their DR needs,
identified a range of solutions to meet the business need, initiated a
project to deliver, test and provide ongoing maintenance for the required IT
Disaster Recovery solutions.
We have a range of recovery options for you depending
on your needs and budget. These include:
| Shared - This is where you contract for space in a
recovery suite that is sold several times over. If someone else invokes first
you might get bumped to another suite or another recovery centre. It's cheaper
and balances cost against the likelihood of multiple invocations. Supplier
have exclusion zones, so that none of your neighbours are subscribed to the
same seats as you. i.e. if your building goes up no one in your building or
about 500m will be expecting to go to the same seat as you. |
| Dedicated - This is where you have seats dedicated to
you, there no risk of multiple invocations leaving you without your first
choice recovery centre. You can also access your seats when you want, giving
you more freedom to test at your convenience. |
| Reciprocal desks - This is where you have a contractual
agreement with another local office. |
| Assisted Recovery - This is a service we offer where we manage the
recovery of your work space on your behalf. |
| Mobile build - This is where we ship and build a mobile office to
a location of your choice. |
| Clean up - This is where we provide assistance with the
recovery of damaged documents and kit. |
| Back to work - This is where we help you move back to
your office or find an alternate site. |
Key Benefits
| Solution can be selected to reflect budget and recovery
time needs i.e. Dedicated is near instant failover but it's very expensive,
whereas, shared is cheap but slower and comes with some risks of multi
occupancy. |
| You choose the level of support that reflects your
needs. |
| You have the flexibility to cover all possible
scenarios. |
| We do the hard work, you concentrate on doing what you
do best. |
| You get 1st class talent on your team, but not on your
payroll. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- We consolidated WAR contracts across large corporation,
co-terminating contracts and signing a new single deal that reduced run rate
costs by over £500k/pa, whilst increasing overall capacity and providing a new
dedicated facility that the company now internally self syndicates.
- Case Study 2
- Working with a UK Retail bank turned around a
situation where across 9 WAR contracts they had
repeatedly failed to complete a successful test. Made supplier and staff changes
and introduced a structured test process, with clear roles and
responsibilities that resulted in
100% success during subsequent 12 month test cycle.
- Case Study 3
- Devised programme to ramp up coverage and testing for
a large bank from 6 tests a year to over 50 across 19 locations covered i.e.
we delivered year on year exponential growth for 3
years without increasing existing team size and only a modest increase in budgets
to reflect additional travel and subsistence.
For those businesses that have specialist facilities and
for whom relocation to a recovery site is not good enough. The answer is to have
a bespoke mobile build. We can arrange to have a secure operations facility
built within 5 weeks of a disaster. Mobile build is also a cost effective way to
cater for the possibility of a protracted outage.
Key Benefits
| You get a purpose built facility and you can occupy it
until a permanent facility is ready for you to occupy. |
| The costs of mobile build are considerably lower than
syndicated facilities for a protracted invocation. |
| You'll be back in operation within weeks even if
someone drops a Jumbo on your roof. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Large meat processing facility in Scotland was
destroyed by a fire. A bespoke processing facility was built at the original
factory site. They were back in full production in weeks and survived a
disaster that would have ruined the majority of their competitors.
- Case Study 2
- Used a mobile office solution to supplement a
corporate recovery strategy so that the total number of dedicated and
syndicated seats could be keep at a low ceiling. This saved over £1m in
contract costs, yet meant that over a protracted disaster they could ramp
numbers up to meet demand.
Having data secure is the most important aspect of any
recovery solution. We provide a range of services including:
| Offsite media storage |
| Offsite media collection and delivery |
| Data Vaulting & replication |
Key Benefits
| We do the work, you concentrate on what you do best! |
| peace of mind - Your data is available when and where you need
it. |
| You'll comply with relevant regulations. |
| Your customer records will be secure. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Working with a subsidiary of a large corporate
created a back up capability and arrange for the removal and storage of
media at secure facility.
- Case Study 2
- Implemented a virtual tape system for UK Bank that
reduced the total storage foot print, provided off-site back-ups at point of
capture and reduce storage/media costs by £900k/pa.
We provide a range of telephony solutions that include:
| Automated call notification of a disaster. |
| Staff information lines |
| Virtual Crisis Command Centres. |
Key Benefits
| Keep your staff informed and provide them with a self
service ability to get more info. |
| Mobilise your staff regardless of time of day or your
personal availability. |
| Convene voice conferences with automated dial out. |
| Puts you in control of an on demand service either by the
internet or direct dial. |
| Pay for what you use, no subscription charges. |
| We do the work, you concentrate on what you do best! |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- An investment bank implemented a global call
notification system that tracked all their staff down, confirmed their
safely and informed them of next steps. Testing achieved notification to
7000+ staff with over 80% notified within 5 minutes.
- Case Study 2
- During both of the London bombings in July 2005 we
used virtual crisis command centre facilities to effectively co-ordinate crisis management
teams and local recovery teams, even though key members of the teams
convened were spread across a very wide geographical area.
- Case Study 3
- We used unmanned staff information lines to
communicate the latest information to staff sent home following the 7th July
bombings in London. We were able to post the latest updates and inform staff
when to return to work. The line was used extensively by staff and proved itself as a low cost medium of mass communication.
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We are able to provide a variety of support options for
you at the moment of disaster. Naturally, we will be happy to provide free
advice and answer specific questions if we are available. However, we recommend a formal support
arrangement that guarantees our time and attention where we either:
| Lead your crisis response team on you behalf. |
| Provide support and facilitation for your crisis
response team. |
| Provide tools, materials and equipments. |
| Provide your off site crisis command centre. |
Key Benefits
| You have a seasoned and proven crisis management
professional that has real life experience of managing real disasters on your team. |
| You have the benefit of our extensive network of
contacts working for you. |
| You don't freeze or procrastinate when time is of an
essence. We will act quickly to secure the maximum from any situation. |
| We do the work, you concentrate on visibly leading and
supporting your people and clients from the front. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Following an external contractor excavations
disconnecting a call centre from its data network we convened a crisis
response in 30 minutes of the event. We quickly invoked the recovery plan and were able to have full service
available from their recovery centre for start of day next morning. The centre only lost 2 hours
of production time and customer experience and revenue impact was minimal.
- Case Study 2
- Following internal and routine power maintenance a
contractor severed the power supply to the main data centre. Critically, the
cut was the wrong side of the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) at a single
point of failure; so the entire data centre was lost. Worse still because of
health and safety restrictions, immediate remedial work was not possible.
The incident response team convened and executed recovery procedures that
ensured that systems were recovered and customer service was resumed for the
the next working day. N.B. This client was most fortunate, as we had earlier
identified this scenario in our Crisis Exercise. During the exercise we
uncovered a range of issues that would have prevent successful recovery. These issues had
all been resolved in the 12 months preceding the incident. 12 months earlier
and this situation would have brought this prestigious client to their knees.
- Case Study 3
- During the London bombings on 7th July 2005 we acted
for a client that though not physically effected had many staff stuck in
their office or unaccounted for. All the key crisis team members were not
physically in London, so we organised a virtual crisis team. Key decisions
were made quickly, staff accounted for and appropriate communication
was delivered consistently throughout the event. Realising the most pressing
problem was getting staff home when all public transport had failed; we
mobilised buses calling in buses from as far as Oxford and Ipswich. Because
of our swift action all staff were able to travel home without problem, many
getting home earlier than on a normal working day.
We are able to help you with your contract
negotiations where clients are demanding business continuity to make sure that
you can economically meet their requirements. We can also help with your own
Terms and Conditions and service schedules where you have a need for your
suppliers to be covered.
| Support you through due diligence. |
| Handle client correspondence. |
| Develop your Terms & Conditions. |
| Develop your service schedules. |
Key Benefits
| You have someone on the team that knows the tricks some
suppliers play and can avoid some BIG pitfalls. |
| We can look through the words and show you the reality
either in terms of your exposure or how to meet an obligation. |
| You can be sure that you can meet the clients demands
for continuity, economically i.e. you'll maintain your margin and ideally pass
the cost on. |
| You will be confident that you can meet your clients terms &
conditions. |
| We do the work we love, you concentrate on doing what
you do best! |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Our client was outsourcing delivery of their main IT
systems. We under took contract due diligence and ensured that the supplier
was reallly able to met the clients specific needs at a fair cost. Because of our inside knowledge
of the suppliers methods and sourcing we were able to drive the costs down
to a fair level saving our client over £100k/pa.
- Case Study 2
- We were tasked with completing third party reviews
for a large client. We established the extent of critical activities that
were being undertaken outside of the clients organisation. We determined the
necessary levels of continuity and where gaps existed. We oversaw the
testing of third parties and ensured that contract changes were made as
required (normally at renewal).
- Case Study 3
- Acting on behalf of another client we responded to
their
prospective Joint Venture partners demands for continuity for elements of
the service delivered by our client. We were able to position our clients
capability and renegotiate the terms and conditions avoiding a deal breaking
capital investment.
In many instances it's required that you undertake plan
reviews i.e. make sure that your plans meet internal or external standards on an
annual basis. Regardless of external demand, this is a good practice and can
highlight breakdowns in your internal change processes, not to mention omissions
in your earlier preparations. We provide a variety of services including:
| Plan audit reviews |
| Desk top walkthroughs |
| Integrated testing. |
Key Benefits
| When you push the button, it works! |
| You won't get bitten by regulators or auditors when
your plans don't reflect your own policy and standards. |
| You won't get caught out because your plans have
failed to track your changing situation. |
| You won't be surprised by omissions or oversights
during the plan creation. |
| You get experienced eyes that can quickly spot
holes, gaps and weaknesses in your plans. |
| We do what we love doing, and you get to spend your valuable time doing what you
do best. |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- A medium sized client with 40 plans required a review
of their plans to comply with external requirements. We completed the review
in just over a week, capturing all issues and communicating back an action
plan to each of the plan owners whilst providing a central control to ensure
all work was completed.
- Case Study 2
- Another client, a subsidiary of a larger US
organisation has to complete 6 monthly desktop exercises. The exercises were
completed over a period of several weeks and had a number of benefits for
the client including: familiarising key staff with there responsibilities,
allowing them to practice the necessary skills and processes in a safe
environment and last but no least we we identified gaps in the existing plans.
Few things are as important in business continuity and few
things (if not done well) are as risky and offer such poor pay back on investment.
Having professional oversight of your technology testing is critical to ensure
its effectiveness, efficiency and long term value to your organisation. There
are many flavours of testing including:
| Single component fail over. |
| Sub-system failover. |
| Platform recovery. |
| Data Centre recovery. |
| Business Unit Recovery. |
| Building Recovery. |
| Metropolitan area recovery. |
We're experts at all types of testing and have
completed hundereds of tests for our clients. We have a very high success
rate and pride ourselves on the value and quality of our testing
Key Benefits
| You have some of the best testers working for you. |
| You'll find any problems and fix them before your
DR capability is called on in anger. |
| You'll avoid unnecessary risks associated with
testing i.e. your test won't become a real life disaster! |
| The testing will prove something valuable and you
can increase the rigour as your team gain confidence, experience and iron
out any potential show stoppers. |
| Your staff will become well practiced in the steps
they really have to take if disaster strikes. |
| We do what we love, you spend more of your time
doing what you do best! |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- Our client had consistently failed to score a
successful test in spite of having good contracts in place and professional
services teams involved. We quickly narrowed down the key problem areas and
introduced a structured testing regime. We set about raising expectations
where previously people just didn't believe it would work, mainly because they
we're convinced that other teams were incompetent. Sticking to the approach,
observing clearly stated roles and responsibilities and managing deliverables we saw
a dramatic improvement in team performance and the tests results steadily
turned around.
- Case Study 2
- One large retail bank realised that it had a large
number of office buildings clustered within a 1 km2
area. This represented a logistical challenge not to mention risk of trying
to managing multiple invocations of their
Work Area Recovery plans. To address this we
created a comprehensive test schedule that included testing each building
independently i.e. catering for scenarios restricted to a single building.
This was followed with an additional test that required recovering all critical
functions across the 11 buildings. The test involved a lot of preparation
and we took the prudent step of completing a successful full test cycle of
all buildings before tackling the metropolitan wide scenario. This remain
one of the largest tests completed in the UK to date and we are very proud
of the successful outcome.
- Case Study 3
- For another client we co-ordinated an integrated IT,
Business and Crisis exercise. This started with the Crisis Scenario
exercise, that led to the invocation of both the Data Centre recovery plan
and building recovery plan. The exercise required 50 IT staff to be
mobilised to recover the data centre at a third party DR site on day 1
through 4, and a further 10 IT staff deployed at the Work Area Recovery
(WAR) site from day 2, with 60 business people arriving at the WAR site on
day 3 and 4 to test critical business functionality is possible from the WAR
site.
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Few things are as powerful as Crisis Simulation for
preparing your staff for the worst things that can happen to
your business. Open Continuity simulations are tailored to your needs and range
from basic scenarios to full interactive sessions using live feeds,
journalists and video.
Key Benefits
| Let your team get hands on experience of a variety
of crisis situations. |
| Build confidence in a safe environment. |
| Test out and familiarise staff with your plans,
communication lines, scripts, templates. |
| Increase the familiarity of the Crisis Team with
their roles and responsibilities. |
| Enable the whole team to understand one another's
roles and how the process comes together. |
| Enable your Open Continuity consultant to assess
your team in role, identify any issues and individual development needs. |
| We do what we love and you concentrate on doing
what you do best! |
Service Examples
- Case Study 1
- We used a Crisis Scenario with a credit card company to help
them understand some of the issues with their existing data centre
environment. After the simulation, it was clear what the issues were and why
action was required. Critically, we had a list of all the remediation
actions required and the client was able to act on these and address the
gaps. One year later they experience a major outage of their data centre and
survived with minimal service impact because all the exposures had been
addressed and an improved tested plan was in place.
- Case Study 2
- For another client we performed a Crisis exercise
that involved a flu pandemic resulting in a prolonged period where up to 50%
of their staff were unable to attend work. We built the scenario based on
the recent market wide exercise conducted by the FSA. We used compressed
time to simulate the passing weeks and breakout sessions to allow the
participants to assimilate the changing scenario and reflect on their
performance.
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