9/11 drives Hero Group to plan DR center

NEW DELHI: In light of the recent events like 9/11 or the New York grid failure in August 2003, the importance of disaster recovery has come to the forefront. Hero Group of companies is planning to have a common disaster recovery (DR) center to cater to different companies under its umbrella. According to the company, the center is likely to be based close of its Gurgaon facility and would be operational within the next six months.

"We are going to create a DR site at the group level, where we can handle data recovery for all the Hero group of companies including - Hero Honda and Hero Cycles. We are not in a position to comment about the investment plans as of now but the center would be operational within the next six months," informed, information systems VP at Hero Honda Motors Ltd SR Balasubramanian.

At present, the company has its centralized data center located in Gurgaon with its Dharuhera plant and headquarters having a few local servers. "We have a network of structured LAN at three locations and WAN on hybrid links. Higher end monitoring of all the equipment is being done in house," Balasubramanian added.

According to Balasubramanian, businesses should try and make DR planning a high priority "A lot of businesses talk about DR, but don't make planning for one a high priority. Fire, theft, sabotage, intrusion, power outage or explosion -- all can cause major disruptions in a business and can affect the security and integrity of data and physical assets of an organization. In today's environment, you simply cannot afford to loose on the vital data and have to be prepared to face difficult circumstances," he explained.

To further streamline its processes, the company is also planning to extend its existing economic resource planning (ERP) solution for its partners all over the country. "We have this solution from SAP being implemented within the organization and we are in the process of extending this to link our business partners using the supply chain module," he added.

With a projected turnover of Rs 6,000 crore for the year 2003-04, the company has seen a growth of more than 250 percent in sales volumes between the year 1998-99 and ‘02-03. "Over the last few years we have almost doubled the manpower for the company and we are expecting to sell two million motorcycles by ‘03-04. So with initiatives such as these in place, we will be in a better position to increase our business profitability for the near future," he informed.

(CyberMedia News Service)