Business continuity andresiliency services from IBMHelping business stay in business

IBM Global Technology Services August 2010

Thought Leadership White Paper

2 Business continuity and resiliency services from IBM

Executive summaryHow do you know if your organization is proactively preparedfor—and able to flexibly respond to—unplanned events? Doesyour business possess the resilience it needs to rapidly react topotentially costly man-made or natural disruptive events? Ifthe unthinkable should occur, discover how IBM can help pro-tect your brand and potential revenue by helping you to:

● Assess your risks● Develop a tailored business resilience strategy● Safeguard your business-critical information while maintain-

ing continuous operations● Enable a virtually complete recovery should disaster occur

With supply chain interdependencies, increasing regulatoryrequirements and geographically dispersed businesses encom-passing everything from traditional storefronts to online operations, organizations are facing intense pressure to

improve performance, maintain continuous availability andensure data integrity. Areas of concern that organizations needto primarily focus on include enterprise and work area risk,availability of critical data and business applications, IT stability, recoverability of IT infrastructure, data backup anddisaster recovery. Meeting these demands in a global economymeans today’s enterprise must be highly resilient and able toanticipate multiple risks. At the same time, organizationsshould be prepared to withstand—and flexibly adapt to—unexpected disruptions of all types while remaining poised totake advantage of new opportunities. Most disruptions arecaused by infrastructure outages or human error, but they canalso be the result of random power outages, natural disastersor international events. Clearly, any of these disruptions canbe costly and undermine your ability to maintain IT opera-tions. Unplanned outages can also create far-reaching consequences that impact your long-term revenue stream,your brand and ultimately, your organization’s survival.Forward-thinking leaders are experiencing a wake-up call, recognizing that the probability and types of risk to businesscontinuity are higher than commonly believed, and they aretaking steps to improve their resiliency capabilities. In otherwords, to help ensure a viable future, adopting a smarter,proactive and comprehensive business resiliency strategy isnothing less than imperative. A more interconnected andintelligent approach allows your business to address theincreased risk, complexity and cost of downtime. Businesscontinuity and resiliency services from IBM can help yourorganization:

● Manage risk through an enterprise-wide resiliency strategy● Lower costs through proactive incident response and

reduced downtime● Ensure resilient service delivery in a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week

world● Respond with speed and agility while minimizing risk

exposure

Today’s enterprise must be highly resilientand able to anticipate multiple risks.

Contents

3 Determining your risk factors

● Business-driven risks● Data-driven risks● Event-driven risks

5 Building resilience into your business operations

6 Developing an effective business continuity andresiliency strategy

11 Why IBM?

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Determining your risk factorsBusiness resilience has become a top priority for both execu-tives and stakeholders, and with good reason. An increasinglyinterconnected marketplace means that any enterprise, atsome point, is likely to be vulnerable to risks beyond its control. Any number of these risks factors—whether down thesupply chain or in another corner of the world—could jeop-ardize your business and its reputation. As an organizationalleader, you cannot succumb to a false sense of security. Youhave worked too hard to build your business—and its reputa-tion. You cannot afford to leave anything to chance when itcomes to delivering excellent service and reliability to yourpartners and customers, as well as providing maximum valueto investors.

To meet the uncompromising expectations of today’s con-sumers, the infrastructure, data and people that comprise yourbusiness must be reliable, agile, resilient and secure. At thesame time, you need the ability to seamlessly adapt to chang-ing compliance requirements for your local geography and forthose around the world—or possibly face penalties.Furthermore, it’s critical that you are able to quickly and effi-ciently recover from a vast array of multidimensional risksshould they become actual situations. And as the number andtypes of risks continue to grow, a robust business resiliencystrategy is essential to fostering your company’s future success.

You cannot afford to leave anything tochance when it comes to delivering excellentservice and reliability to your partners andcustomers.

Did you know?

● By 2014, 25 percent of large enterprises will use a com-bination of private infrastructure and public cloud serv-ices to improve their recovery and continuity readiness.

● By 2015, 25 percent of enterprises will have significantlyreduced or eliminated the use of traditional DR testing.

● By 2015, 20 percent of SMBs will utilize cloud-basedstorage services as an alternative to the cost and complexity of software-based backup and restore.1

Your business must be resilient and able to recover from all types of dis-ruptive events.

Business driven

Data driven

Event driven

Strategy and vision

Organization

Processes

Applications and data

Technology

Facilities

Risk mitigation strategies

Business resilience

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stakeholders. A robust resiliency solution can help to protectyour organization from this type of risk, going beyond simplyrestoring your IT infrastructure to also helping keep yourbusiness continuously operating and easing management ofcompliance with industry and government regulations—so youcan provide virtually anytime, anywhere accessibility toapproved users.

Data-driven risks. Overlapping with business-driven risks,data-driven risks apply to all your data and are caused by awide range of factors, including disk failure, corruption,viruses or even extreme data growth. Such factors negativelyimpact continuity as well as the infrastructure, processes, people and systems that keep your organization’s data andinformation accessible for business operations, complianceaudits and legal requests. To protect against data-driven risks,you need a solution that delivers efficient backup and quickretrieval of critical data and information, whenever and wher-ever it is needed. You also need to make sure your data is man-aged continuously and is safe from viruses, theft and othertypes of loss.

Event-driven risks. Disrupting an organization’s workforce,processes, applications or infrastructure, event-driven risks arecaused by power outages, natural disasters, pandemics, fires,thefts and other IT disruptions, including those created bymergers and acquisitions. To mitigate these risks, your organi-zation must be able to distribute operations beyond the area ofimmediate impact as well as implement an effective disasterrecovery and crisis management plan. This strategy can keepyour critical people, networks, IT services and facilities safeand available to meet the recovery objectives of your business.

How can you address this complex business challenge anddevelop a resiliency plan that flexibly meets your organiza-tion’s changing needs? You need an interdisciplinary, enterprise-wide business resilience strategy that proactivelyanticipates and effectively responds to all types of risks,including:

Business-driven risks. Affecting business continuity andstrategic business operations, business-driven risks—includingapplication outages or overload from marketing demand-generation campaigns—may create enterprise-wide ramifica-tions that result in breaches in compliance, governance, availability, security and performance, as well as inviteunwanted intrusions into critical business services. Left unaddressed without a business continuity plan, they causeintense concern for executive board members and other

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● Enable your workforce to continue working in times of disruption

● Help your brand remain strong by leveraging IBM’s industry-leading disaster response and recovery experience

Many service providers claim marketplace leadership or evenglobal reach. But when it comes to integrating a solution thatspans technologies and vendors as well as the globe—one thattakes both reactive and proactive strategies into account—no other provider has the combination of capabilities thatIBM offers. We can provide access to hundreds of global business resilience centers and dedicated business continuityprofessionals worldwide, as well as the ability to put your critical personnel into as many fully equipped work seats as

Building resilience into your business operationsBusiness continuity and resiliency services from IBM can helpyou proactively identify, understand and manage operationalrisks so you can maintain continuous business operations, protect your brand image and remain a trusted provider toyour customers and partners. Your business stays up, and youstay competitive—whether you’re responding to a risk ormaneuvering to adapt to changes in the marketplace.IBM services range from helping you to get started with busi-ness continuity planning to creating tailored availability, dataprotection, and disaster recovery solutions that are alignedwith your unique business requirements. IBM can provide thebreadth of solutions you need to develop an end-to-endresiliency strategy. With your particular business model, loca-tions and requirements in mind, IBM can help design aneffective business continuity plan and solution that’s ideal foryou. Plus, with local, regional and global resources in place,IBM can help you understand and take full advantage of thebenefits of a business continuity plan. Our services can:

● Analyze the impact of a business disruption and the cost ofdowntime, then assess and address any gaps

● Determine the constantly changing governmental andindustry regulations associated with business continuity that apply to you and help develop a plan for managingcompliance

● Assess how you can reinforce your business processes so thatwhen unexpected disruptive events occur, your customersand your partners remain in contact

● Help ensure your data is effectively backed up and easilyrecovered

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necessary to keep your business running. IBM delivers credi-bility that comes from decades of experience maintaining continuous operations for our company and for businesses innearly every industry—in every part of the world. That’s amessage you can transfer to your customers, regulatory offi-cials and supply chain partners who want to be confident thatyou’re well-prepared for contingencies.

IBM’s business continuity and resiliency services include:

● IBM Resiliency Consulting Services that assess, design, plan,implement and test your business resilience program andsupporting infrastructure

● IBM Managed Resiliency Services that provide high-availability recovery solutions for mission-critical businessprocesses

● IBM Information Protection Services that enable the cloud-based backup, restore and archiving of critical data, informa-tion and systems

● IBM Infrastructure Recovery Services that recover IT andbusiness infrastructures, helping a company stay in businessduring a disruption

Developing an effective businesscontinuity and resiliency strategyYou have to ask yourself and your team: How well do we under-stand the risks to our organization? Have we fully identified them?You also need to consider the actual cost of downtime to yourbusiness. How prepared is your business to continue to meetservice level commitments in the face of adverse events? Doyou have the IT skills, technology and expertise to develop aplan to handle myriad risks potentially coming your way? Canyour business effectively comply with ever-changing customercontractual requirements, industry standards or governmentregulations? Is your business truly resilient?

You need an enterprise-wide businessresiliency strategy that proactively antici-pates and effectively responds to all types ofrisks.

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You need to develop a resiliency strategy aligned with your uniquebusiness needs.

IBM Resiliency Consulting ServicesAs part of our comprehensive approach, IBM ResiliencyConsulting Services offers flexible approaches to help youarchitect a resiliency solution tailored to your unique businessneeds—from solution assessment and planning to design, testand implementation. We collaborate with you to provide aholistic assessment of risks across the layers of your business,starting with your strategy and vision, organization and humanresources to business processes, technologies, applications anddata, as well as your physical IT infrastructure and facilities.By helping to assess and diagnose risks and their root causes,along with specific prescriptive recommendations to address

those risks, you can begin to build a strong foundation forbusiness resilience. Our experts enable you to realize value andbenefits independent of technology, design or vendor by lever-aging industry best practices and the IBM Resilient EnterpriseBlueprint, an architectural framework that helps you meetspecified business service level and risk tolerance objectives soyou can accurately identify gaps for a more comprehensive,effective resiliency strategy and design. IBM’s end-to-endapproach helps you assess and plan for greater businessresilience to create, deliver and implement a highly effectivebusiness resilience strategy and design for your organization.And with our ongoing services, we can continue to assist withmanaging your resilience solution—helping to continuallyensure that your IT infrastructure and business stay aligned,agile and secure.

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IBM Managed Resiliency ServicesWhat makes your business stand out in a competitive marketplace? Does your resiliency plan support your ability tomaintain the availability levels required by your business? Canyour business deftly handle a variety of potential threats toavailability, including IT infrastructure stressors or humanerror? To thrive, your company must be able to offer extraor-dinary performance and deliver managed continuity or facedisgruntled customers, partners and employees. You also risklosing your hard-won customer base and potential revenue,

and could end up with a dramatically diminished brand image.In addition to damaging your relationships with your cus-tomers, a failure to maintain service levels can cost you byimpeding employee productivity and hindering your ability tosmoothly meet changing compliance requirements.

Managing extreme data growth

Data is growing at explosive rates—growing from 281 exabytes* in 2007 to 1800 exabytes in 2012.

Most companies lack the expertise to ade-quately assess, back up, store and protectcritical data that is widely distributedacross the enterprise.

Designed to help reduce the frequency and duration of infra-structure outages and allow your organization, customers andpartners to access information, communicate and run keybusiness applications, IBM Managed Resiliency Services helpsyou maintain your changing service level objectives and continue critical operations to achieve ongoing business availability. Through IBM’s consistent management—eitherfull or partial—of your critical business processes, IT systems,operating environments and networks, you can experiencereduced data loss and application and system downtime whiledecreasing infrastructure complexity with better balancing ofworkloads. As a result, you gain an IT infrastructure that isequipped to better manage surges in demand, address regulatory compliance mandates and support governance—allfactors that can significantly minimize the financial impact ofbusiness disruptions. With your IT staff free to focus on core,revenue-generating business projects and innovation, you’rebetter able to optimize existing IT resources to meet andexceed IT availability and service level requirements. And byhelping you avoid or reduce capital expense while monitoring

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IBM Infrastructure Recovery Services helpsempower your organization to efficientlyprepare for, respond to and recover fromdisruptive events—regardless of their sizeor scope.

and managing operational expenses and service levels, yourcompany is empowered with enhanced agility to meet chang-ing regulatory requirements and evolving business needs tomove beyond merely defensively reacting to marketplace fluxand instead, be positioned to proactively respond to change.IBM offers you the flexibility to select the services that provide the optimal balance of cost-effectiveness and highavailability for your most critical business data and processes,as well as many options for less critical data and processes. Asa trusted, financially sound IT leader, we can provide robust,proactive and event-driven managed services and products thatenable your enterprise to avoid downtime, reduce recoverytime following all kinds of outages and build a more resilientinfrastructure to stand strong in any kind of economic environment.

IBM Information Protection ServicesIBM Information Protection Services is a set of cloud-basedmanaged services that can help you manage your data andemail, wherever it’s housed, and enable you to quickly back up,restore, archive and maintain access to it on demand and withintegrity. Implementing an effective, cost-efficient resiliencyplan based on your priorities for backup, retention andretrieval, IBM uses leading-edge automation technology tohelp you gain virtually anywhere, anytime access to informa-tion within your extended enterprise, while providing nearlycontinuous monitoring and support. IBM offers robust onsiteand remote data protection for your data center servers, appli-cations and databases as well as data protection for e-mail,desktop and laptops to help automatically safeguard your datain many different scenarios reduce your overall operationalcosts at the same time. You can select from a range of remote,onsite and hybrid data protection services that can help

improve the efficiency and success rate of data backup andrestoration. And with the experience in managing over 3,400 information protection clients with more than 138 petabytes of data, you can be confident knowing thatIBM has the expertise and resources to safeguard your information.

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IBM Infrastructure Recovery ServicesIs your enterprise reinforced to withstand and recover from not just the unthinkable but also the most common disruptions—like power outages? In recent years, heightenedexposure to disruptive events coupled with increasing govern-ment and commercial interdependencies has made disasterrecovery and crisis management a business imperative. Asgrowing numbers of organizations face such situations, theyare realizing the costly repercussions of not having key

capabilities ready to deploy when a situation occurs—repercussions that negatively impact the infrastructure,employees, customers, operations and day-to-day lives.

IBM Infrastructure Recovery Services can empower you toefficiently prepare for, respond to and recover from disruptiveevents—regardless of their size or scope, helping you to han-dle emergency situations and mitigate negative effects.IBM delivers vast experience and expertise to deliver a designand validate an effective plan that can help you meet your specific recovery objectives. Even if you’ve never experienceda particular disaster in your part of the world, it has probablyoccurred to one of IBM’s clients in another locale. IBM sup-ports more than 12,000 clients worldwide, so we’ve learnedwhich procedures are most effective and are able to smoothlylink them with your business processes, including those thatconnect you to your supply chain. We can help you track,assess and respond to local, regional and global disruptionsthat could affect your recovery plan. With more than 150 business resilience centers located around the world offering 5 million square feet of floor space and more than40,000 work area recovery seats, we are poised to help you getyour business back up and running quickly. If your facilitiesbecome damaged, IBM can provide the space, multivendorenvironment, and the equipment for your critical personnel.With sound planning and a prioritized response, you can keepyour losses to a minimum and bounce back, ready for businessas usual. By enabling effective recovery, including temporarywork environments for critical employees that allow fasteremployee access to crucial applications and data, IBM enablesyou to respond faster. With IBM by your side, you can quicklyand efficiently recover from disruptive events that could otherwise permanently damage your operations and brandreputation.

Expanding disaster recovery to include data protection

A national grocery store chain needed to ensure that cur-rent production levels of key business platform operationsystems would be available even in times of disruption ora disaster.

Business continuity and resiliency services fromIBM helped improve recovery time to meet objectives bysupplementing an already existing disaster recovery solu-tion with remote data protection services. This solutionallows the company to store system images in a vault inIBM’s business resilience center in New York, utilizing andexpanding on its existing services agreement with IBM fordisaster recovery.

Benefits:

● Improved recovery time objectives and reduced costassociated with tape backup

● Enhanced resiliency by incorporating data protectioninto the company’s overall business continuity plan

Why IBM?IBM is an experienced and innovative leader with specializedexpertise in data protection, resiliency, high-availability repli-cation, IT recovery, crisis management, business continuityand industry-specific solutions for your business. In tandemwith our strategic partners, we offer a comprehensive portfolioof broad, deep offerings, facilities and resources in services,software and hardware based on consistent, standard, world-class methodologies and processes. Our extensive investmentsin infrastructure combined with more than 1,600 dedicatedbusiness continuity professionals and over 150 businessresilience centers located around the world, respected industryanalysts have recognized IBM as a leader in business continu-ity and resilience. Our unparalleled experience is based onmore than 40 years of business resilience and disaster recoveryexperience and more than 12,000 disaster recovery clients.Using our vast business process and technology expertiseexperience, we help you design and implement a businessresilience solution that meets your organization’s needs. Oursolutions are flexible, tailored to your business and financialgoals as well as the regulatory and geographic requirements ofany location while maintaining standardized timelines andmethodologies to assure high levels of quality. By providing acomprehensive approach specifically designed to maintainyour availability, protect your information and preserve yourbrand, we are able to address multiple types of operationalrisk. And by helping to ensure improved resiliency across allthe layers of your business—including strategy and vision,organization and human resources, business processes, applications and data, and technologies and facilities—you canmore effectively avoid, prepare for, and recover from, virtuallyany disruptive event.

IBM’s unparalleled experience is based onmore than 40 years of business resilienceand disaster recovery experience and morethan 12,000 disaster recovery clients.

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Meeting defined criteria for disaster recovery compliance

A large financial institution in South America needed togain access to a third data center for disaster recoverypurposes while also meeting the compliance requirementsset by the Central Bank of Argentina regarding the loca-tion and distance of a disaster recovery site.

Business continuity and resiliency services fromIBM delivered a solution based on an in-depth analysis tomeasure the bank’s existing disaster plan against thestandards of the Central Bank of Argentina. IBM imple-mented a disaster recovery solution supported by IBM’sbusiness resilience center in that region to fill the gaps inthe bank’s existing plans. The IBM team then implementeda work area recovery plan to enable key personnel to con-tinue working in times of disruption.

Benefits:

● Improved recovery time objectives of less than 72 hoursand recovery point objectives of up to 24 hours

● Gained expertise from the business continuity consult-ing engagement

● Complied with Central Bank of Argentina regulations

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* An exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to onequintillion bytes.

1 “Predicts 2010: New IT Disaster Recovery Technologies Are Emerging, but Most Are in the Early Stages,” Gartner, John P. Morency,November, 2009.

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For more informationTo learn more about gaining a world-class business continuityand resiliency solution for every layer of your business, contactyour IBM sales representative, or visit the following Web site:ibm.com/services/continuity