Flooding in Chicago disrupted operations in 400 data centers. A hurricane took out the reservation system of a major airline, forcing agents to write tickets by hand and causing huge losses. The World Trade Center bombing left the mission-critical systems of Fortune 500 companies isolated and inaccessible. And disasters aren't always natural. Computer viruses, malicious hackers, and even simple operator errors can create a data center disaster that has long-term impact on the company.
Most major corporations think they have a disaster recovery plan.
Yet a startling 82 percent of established enterprise systems do not have effective protection against problems such as corruption, accidental deletion, system crashes, viruses, or environmental disasters, according to the 1997 Vulnerability Index Study. Downtime is expensive. Protecting your data is not. Hardware repairs and missed sales opportunities are only the most obvious costs. Legal liability Clearly, even a small amount of downtime can severely impact profitability.