Editorial
SunGard Availability Services recently revealed that for the second year running, office disruptions such as power and communication failures are the main cause for invoking business continuity plans, with incidents rising by six percent in 2011
Looking back, looking ahead
he biggest single cause of business disruption was once again power failure, which rose by 33% in the past year. The results were part of SunGard’s seventh annual analysis of major causes of business disruption in the UK, and reinforce the view that the office remains at most risk of downtime, accounting for 8 out of 10 disruptions. Meanwhile problems due to technology failures dropped by 25% – the fourth consecutive year this failure has reduced significantly. Commenting on the latest results, Keith Tilley, managing director UK&I
T
and executive vice president Europe for SunGard Availability Services, said: “The lack of improvement in the prevention of communication disruptions and the significant rise of power failures – a disproportionate 90% of them occurring in London – supports the argument that organisations are still not addressing some aspects of business continuity seriously enough. 2012 will be a particularly difficult year for businesses as the Olympic Games will bring a huge influx of people into the capital. The resulting demand on the power grid and communication networks could have a potentially damaging impact across the UK, especially for those organisations that aren’t prepared.” The analysis of SunGard’s 2011 invocations log highlights only a two
percent drop overall in invocations reported in the UK, from the 2010 figures. Disruption due to communications (relating to network or telephone outages) stayed at approximately the same level, while the number of hardware breakdowns dropped by 30%. The landscape and mitigation of risk continues to evolve. The data indicates that many businesses are introducing alternative means of addressing resilience and availability. Disruption caused by hardware failure continued a downward trend, dropping by 30%, as organisations often deploy virtualised and cloud solutions alongside physical recovery. Perhaps more surprisingly, however, the 2011 riots did not have as big an impact on businesses as was predicted, with only one company citing civil unrest as the cause of its disaster declaration. Keith Tilley continued: “Clearly, the workplace will never be completely immune to disruption, but with such a challenging year ahead it is essential that organisations prepare themselves as exhaustively as possible.” And if recent news reports are anything to go by the summer could be
made even more challenging if the unions and protest groups have their way. It seems that the Olympic period is going to be the main target for threats of strikes; at time of press the Tube drivers were pushing for more money to work during the Games. As the Government is keen to show that the UK is a great place for new businesses and tourism, the unions fancy holding the country to ransom at a point when we least need unrest. Others see the Olympics as the chance to get some publicity for their cause and will hijack any opportunity to get media coverage. It’s time like these that show just how important business continuity is. As
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we’ve mentioned many times before, the country has known about the forthcoming summer of big events for quite some time. There is simply no excuse for companies to claim ignorance and choose to neglect their responsibilities when it comes to operating during the summer months. We know what is coming, so get ready for it – otherwise the SunGard survey of 2012 could be drastically different than it was for 2011.
Andy Clutton - Managing Editor
andy.clutton@
risk-uk.com
Discover more at
www.texe.com Contact Sales: 01706 220 460
5
April 2012
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