The term megacatastrophe has continued to gain prominence in the insurance and reinsurance worlds over the last few decades. Typically used to describe the havoc wreaked by major disasters such as Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, megacatastrophe has also been used to illustrate the comprehensive and devastating effects of the four… Continue reading Managing Risk with Advanced Modeling Techniques

A Proactive, Organizational Approach No doubt a recurring thought in your mind as a business leader is what to do when a critical system goes down. What happens to your client updates when you can’t access your regular lines of communication? How will you convey critical information to your teams when you’re challenged by less-than-stellar… Continue reading Single Points of Failure

As president of Premier Purchasing Partners, Mike Alkire has responsibility for an organization that offers comprehensive supply chain services to 2,300 hospitals of the Premier healthcare alliance. Using Premier’s contracts, alliance members purchase more than $33 billion of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and other supplies and services annually at market-leading prices. Premier also provides support for… Continue reading An Interview with the Mike Alkire of Premier Purchasing Partners

Risk to your business comes in many forms. There are natural disasters and economic downturns, as well as legal and regulatory compliance issues. There’s also unplanned downtime caused by poorly planned change or other unexpected issues. So, with all these known and unknown potential problems, how can IT organizations prepare for the unpredictable? Cloud computing… Continue reading Be Prepared for the Unpredictable with Nimble Private Cloud Infrastructure

The headlines are impossible to miss as havoc in the financial markets and the spiraling economic mess have unfolded. Daily, we hear of Fortune 500 companies that are struggling to stay afloat and many on Main Street that have already succumbed. In a recent Fortune Small Business/Zogby International poll of business owners, many respondents said… Continue reading When Suppliers Go Out-of-Business

This article describes the approaches used for the various types of business continuity management (BCM) audits and how audits impact the business continuity planner. It also describes the most common weaknesses found in business continuity plans. And lastly, it presents a road map to prepare for a BCM audit. BCM Audit Definition The most general… Continue reading How to Survive a BCM Audit

The time has come for business continuity to evolve beyond the idea of “all hazards” planning and deal directly with the core causes of business interruptions. This article details an approach that takes everything you loved about all hazards planning and enhances it with detailed procedures focused on the resources that your organization cares about… Continue reading The Death of All Hazards Planning?

Despite the hype that leads us to look at cloud computing as the new platform for critical applications, most enterprises are not buying public cloud computing systems as their primary platform for business-critical applications. For now, perhaps they are right to wait. That is, until business continuity or disaster recovery (DR) becomes the next killer… Continue reading Leveraging Cloud Computing for Business Continuity

Nat Forbes created quite a stir recently with a thought-provoking blog post at calamityprevention.com called “Is the BCM Profession a Dead-End?” He begins with a dark but somewhat funny characterization of the business continuity professional as a lonely, underappreciated, underfunded, corporate pariah begging for scraps at the edge of the organizational hierarchy. Worse yet, the… Continue reading Is the Future of Business Continuity Broad or Deep?

A major UK bank has experienced no major system outages in its ATM network for 15 years. How has it achieved this remarkable availability? Through the use of an active/active network architecture. Many enterprises in the financial, telecommunications, health, transportation, gaming, and other industries have reported similar experiences. Let’s look at how these continuously-available active/active… Continue reading Achieving Continuous Availability with Active/Active Networks