IBM unveils disaster management tool

NEW DELHI, INDIA: IBM has unveiled the new Innovative framework for building a resilient enterprise.

Resiliency Maturity Index (RMI), a disaster management tool developed by researchers at India Research Laboratory, consists of an innovative model to assess the end-to-end organizational resilience and quantitatively compute the resiliency score of the organization.

RMI framework helps the customers to determine the resiliency benefits of moving from an in-house operation to an outsourced service vendor, and it can help customers evaluate the relative resiliency of multiple service providers, IBM said in a statement.

It helps executives understand how varying the resiliency of different components impacts the overall resiliency of the organization.

"Businesses and governments operating in today's environment require capabilities across all three phases of crisis: readiness, response and recovery,” said Dr Daniel Dias, director, IBM India Research Laboratory. "Organizations face a growing number of threats from natural and man-made disasters or disruptive events that have costly, far-reaching impact."

“Understanding what your risks are, where your exposure lies, and getting the business Continuity process integrated throughout the organization are critical for your business," he added.

"In the age of outsourcing and globalization, enterprises need to rapidly adapt and respond to internal or external dynamic changes - opportunities, demands, disruptions or threats - and continue operations with limited impact to the business. Failures or threats that can test the resiliency of an organization can range from relatively simple power and network failures, to massive breakdowns from terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and pandemics,” says Dr Guruduth Banavar, associate director, IBM India Research Laboratory, Bangalore.

Researchers at the IBM India Research Laboratory designed the Resiliency Maturity Index to enable quantifying the effect of failures on an organization. This study recently published by the researchers demonstrated the utility of the RMI for multiple scenarios, including (a) making investment decisions to reach a target RMI score, (b) assessing the impact of expanding the organization, and (c) making a decision or sales pitch concerning outsourcing (d) Helping clients understand how various service providers compare in terms of Resiliency prior to making an outsourcing decision.