When people think of disasters they generally envision hurricanes, floods or earthquakes - catastrophic events that devastate communities. However, for a business, a disaster can be a failed server or something as small as a failed switch or a computer virus. These events can have significant impact on a business, often bringing operations to a standstill.

Fortunately Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery planning are no longer solely for fortune 500 companies. With recent advancements in technology, every company should be looking at strategies that protect business continuity. Whether the focus in on day to day business continuity that drives increased productivity and decreased downtime or strategies that avoid unexpected catastrophic disasters, PlanIT Solutions has products and services (AdvantageCare Managed Services, AdvantageCare Disaster Recovery) that can insure your company against costly, unplanned interruptions of your business.

Please join us January 28th or 29th for the next topic in our Lunch and Learn/Webinar series: Strategies for Business Continuity – AdvantageCare Disaster Recovery.

    Steven Kellam
Executive Vice President

Business continuity is an issue that no organization can afford to ignore. In fact, according to The Definitive Handbook for Business Management, between 60 and 90 percent of companies without a proactive disaster plan find themselves out of business within 24 months of experiencing a major disaster.

Increasingly, IT power and cooling are becoming more important as factors in ensuring business continuity. These 10 steps provide a good start for ensuring the integrity and availability of your IT systems.

1. Assess your situation.
Review existing power and cooling systems to identify threats and vulnerabilities to business continuity.

2. Ensure the physical security of your equipment
While large data centers often have strict access policies and procedures, smaller locations or more remote locations may not. It’s important to use racks that come with key or card swipe locks and contact closures that protect against unauthorized access. These locks and closures can be connected to your network so you can easily provide authorizations and monitor access. Within the rack, smart PDUs enable control of individual receptacles. This prevents unauthorized equipment additions that can overload circuits and create a power outage.

Read more steps

Do you have old monitors sitting in the corners? Workstations that are not being used? The New Year is a perfect time to eliminate your old unused equipment; and to kick off 2009, PlanIT Solutions is having a January eWaste drive.

PlanIT Solutions will donate our time to refurbish and spruce up your used equipment to make sure everything is in working order. Then the performing equipment will be donated to local charities and nonprofits. All equipment that cannot be donated will be properly recycled through an e-waste organization.

For those interested in taking it a step further, and have servers or other equipment that you are interested in consolidating, we welcome the opportunity to discuss green options that are not only good for the environment, but provide long term financial benefits.

This is the first of many ewaste drives PlanIT Solutions will offer. We strongly believe in supporting our clients, the community and the environment. Even the smallest changes can add up to a big difference for the environment and to local charities and non profits.

Please contact Jennifer King for details on pick up or delivery of equipment

Thank you and Happy New Year,
Jennifer King, Director of Operations