The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland has wrought havoc on the world. Schools are short-staffed due to teachers being stuck abroad, businesses are suffering because workers can’t travel internationally and phone systems and internet sites are suffering because there’s too much traffic. Take the P&O Ferries website for instance. So many people are trying to book a ferry home that the website has crashed!

It’s a similar scene for most people. The recent winter – a mere couple of months ago – the UK was covered by snow and everything began to suffer. Most companies believed the snow to be the end of bad luck on that scale but another act of God has struck and rather than wait for the third event, they’d be well advised to get disaster recovery now. With disaster recovery, you could get load balanced hosting for your website, an intelligent queuing system for your calls and help running your business while half your staff are missing. Don’t leave it too late again!

You would never have believed it – perhaps the biggest and most iconic name in telecoms…without a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan? It doesn’t seem possible. And yet, BT’s fire and flood yesterday at North Paddington is still causing problems as BT try desperately to restore connectivity. Obviously, if the company had a plan for disaster recovery and business continuity, it wasn’t that good of a plan! When you’re a big company like BT, nothing could be worse for business. Disaster recovery – it even covers acts of God!

Anyone who lives in the UK will have had the same problems the last few months: snow. Causing chaos the length and breadth of the country, we heard horror stories of people stuck in cars and the majority of people gave up on getting to work until the snow cleared.  In the Summer there’s always chance of fires when there’s been no rain for days and kids start messing around, bored after endless days of doing nothing. Spring can bring floods, Autumn can herald gale force winds. Although a relatively mild climate we have in the UK, each season can bring with it dangers. Which is why it’s always a good idea to have inclement weather and the like covered by business continuity and disaster recovery plans. If your business could suffer because of staff being snowed in or phone lines being brought down by winds or fires or any number of problems, then for the sake of business continuity, you need to plan ahead. Then you can go ahead and enjoy the weather without worrying!

After the tsunami and earthquake that devastated Chile in February of this year, Fitch Ratings (which rates 6 telecoms companies in Chile) has been conducting research into the impact and effects of the earthquake and tsunami on these businesses. Surprisingly, the companies have sustained little damage and operations should be fairly easy to reinstate. Expert opinion is that the tsunami will not damage the telecoms sector and hopefully, this will help society recover.

When a disaster like this strikes, it’s important to get businesses up and running again, to help the society as a whole get back on its feet. With a good disaster recovery and business continuity plan, this can be accomplished sooner rather than later.

Nobody can predict the future which is why back-up plans are an essential part of business. Surprisingly, most companies aren’t prepared for the worst though. Over 50% of businesses don’t consider business continuity or disaster recovery which means that in the event of a disaster, they could suffer a complete system shutdown, seriously affecting business.

Don’t let thoughts of a burnt-out business keep you up at night though – elitetele.com can offer comprehensive business continuity and disaster recovery plans that include data recovery and call re-routing. You can’t predict the future – but you can prepare for it!

Anyone who lives in the northern or eastern parts of the UK will have had the same problems the last couple of days: snow. Causing chaos the length and breadth of the country, we’ve heard horror stories of people stuck in cars and on the Channel Tunnel and the majority of people have given up on getting to work until the snow clears. Although snow like this isn’t a common occurrence in the UK, when it happens it comes down hard. Which is why it’s always a good idea to have things like inclement weather covered by business continuity and disaster recovery plans. If your business could suffer because of staff being snowed in or phone lines being brought down or any number of problems, then for the sake of business continuity, you need to plan ahead. Then you can go ahead and enjoy the snow without worrying!

Virgin Media broadband users in Birmingham, Solihull and Kidderminster yesterday suffered when their internet connections went down from around 5.40am in the morning. According to Virgin Media’s status page, the disruption to service was caused by a power cut. Although the disruption didn’t last too long, even a short break in your broadband can affect business. This is why disaster recovery plans are so important to business continuity – with a disaster recovery plan, business in Birmingham could have continued as normal!

America have bitten the bullet so to speak and are finally asking the public for their ideas on disaster recovery. The Disaster Recovery Working Group, under the Obama administration want to find out how the  public feels they should handle disaster recovery – and let’s face it, America do tend to suffer from a high rate of disasters!  Once questionnaires, video conferences and expert advice have been accumulated, the President will be presented with recommendations to improve long-term catastrophic disaster recovery and help develop a national disaster-recovery set of standards around which agencies will work. With the large amount of disasters that seem to lurk unseen worldwide, perhaps we would all be wise to take a leaf out of America’s book.