State Of Enterprise Disaster Recovery Preparedness 2011

The first trend is that secondary sites are being consolidated. In a recessionary climate, companies cut costs by consolidating their secondary sites. This isn't necessarily a bad thing for resiliency, as long as the remaining sites are geographically separated and can replicate data between them. The second trend is site separation is less extreme. Companies are not only consolidating their backup sites, they're also decreasing the distance between them. This is a red flag for companies whose DR sites are close enough that they could be affected by the same disaster. The third trend is dedicated sites remaining the dominant model, but interest in DR in the cloud increases. I&O professionals clearly prefer dedicated infrastructure, but the compelling economic advantages of DR in the cloud is garnering interest. The fourth trend is enterprises aren't rigorously tiering their applications and services. The number of applications that enterprises consider critical is on the rise. To maximize DR efforts, companies should meticulously categorize their applications, prioritizing only those that are truly critical.The fifth trend we are seeing is most disasters are still caused by mundane events. That headlining disaster that you're watching out for most likely won’t be what causes your downtime - instead, it’ll be a backhoe operator at the construction site next door who accidently severs your power or network lines.