Instead of distributing applications and data across multiple branches, you should bring them to a centralized data center and plan disaster recovery (DR) for this data center, says, Dhananjay Ganjoo, VP- Enterprise Solutions, Nortel India. Consolidation not only simplifies the DR planning, but also optimizes the IT resources, he said in an interview with B.V.Shiva Shankar. Excerpts from an interview:

CIOL: How do you find business continuity preparedness among Indian enterprises? Do they comply with global standards?
Dhananjay Ganjoo: A local survey on the business continuity preparedness of the Indian industry shows that as high as 79 percent of the respondents did not have a documented and tested business continuity plan in place. India is now a global player. Global businesses are not interested in getting into a customer relationship (with Indian businesses), unless these are prepared for a disaster. To be able to do business as aglobal player, it has become important for an Indian business to provide assurance to business partners and stakeholders.

Indian companies need to understand that the very way in which business is conducted is undergoing a change with high dependence on IT, to facilitate business processes with the 24x7 environment being a given. Further, with the declining attention span of the customer, to maintain loyalty it is imperative for organizations to ensure the undisrupted availability of business operations.

CIOL: What are the likely hazards that lead to disruption or potential disaster?
DG: Disasters, both natural and intentional, are unpredictable. Natural disasters could be earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, or fire. Disgruntled humans cause intentional disasters that range from virus/hacker attacks to nuclear attacks. Then there are other causes for business disruption like hardware and communications failure. Many organizations are heavily dependent on IT infrastructure and apparently, are not well prepared for disaster recovery. Therefore, if disaster strikes and these organizations cannot recover quickly enough, the consequences could affect business along the entire value chain. Business revenue drops, brand equity takes a beating; there's loss of customers (who choose alternatives) and permanent loss of shareholder value.