One government department estimates that over 40% of businesses never reopen following a disaster. Of the surviving companies, at least 25% will close within 2 years. This view is echoed by the Association of Records Managers and Administrators which states that 60% of businesses confronted by a major disaster close within two years.

Disaster Recovery (DR) preparations are just one aspect of ensuring Business Continuity (BC). The principle aim of Business Continuity planning is to keep the business operational to an agreed extent with the minimum of downtime in the face an new (and generally adverse) conditions. DR planning underpins business continuity by giving your business teams clear concepts of what targets must be met in the event of anything from fire, flood and natural disaster through to simple exclusion from your offices.

For many businesses, DR planning for IT can be a real headache, primarily because it can become enormously expensive. Not only must business data be safely backed up, it must be kept away from the disaster zone. It must be possible to read the data back and apply it to new equipment. And the new equipment must be configured and ready with the software necessary to manage that data ready for trading.

All of this can require considerable planning and investment, which can be such a drain on resources that some small businesses may elect to 'opt out'.

Is there a better way? Yes, definitely.

The entrustIT Virtual Desktop and Application range of products allows small to medium sized enterprises to simplify their requirements into a list of software and effective backup routines. Because our Virtual Desktops can be delivered to anything location with Internet access, it no longer matters what premises are available in the event of a disaster. And because the requirements for logging into our Virtual Desktop products are very low, we can support many different types and ages of client workstation or PC. We can even arrange to rent out client workstations based on simplified hardware, making them much simpler (and quicker) to deploy and very cost-effective.

If you're currently faced with the task of developing an effective disaster recovery plan, talk to our Sales Team today. They'll be happy to demonstrate to you just how quickly you could get access to a fully functional desktop environment, ready to use and preconfigured with the software you need to trade.

What About If You're a Virtual Desktop Customer Already?
If you already use one of the entrustIT Virtual Desktop products  you may be interested to know how we take care of disaster recovery on your behalf.

The entrustIT infrastructure was designed from the ground up to be resilient and redundant - that means that we manage & monitor our systems to minimise the likelihood of failure, but we recognise that equipment does fail. So when a failure is encountered, a redundant system will take over, minimising or negating the effects of the failure. This approach is true for every single core infrastructure component.

In addition, we take backups of all customer data daily (in some cases several times each day) and ensure that these snapshots are shipped to a different secure location for storage.

In the event of a major outage or natural disaster, we maintain secondary data processing sites so that services can be restored with minimal interruption to service. The virtualised nature of our desktop and application product range then works in our customers favour because accessed can be delivered once more from any location.