Whether you have 5 employees or 5,000, you want sustained uptime. That means the infrastructure that houses your company’s most critical data and the people who run it are invaluable, regardless of size. Do your employees know what to do in the event of an emergency? No matter how many of them do, a business continuity plan is essential for an unanticipated disaster. Last week we talked about six disasters likely to impact your data center. However, this list is far from exhaustive. Though it’s true that no one plan can protect you from every possible scenario, having a plan for your business continuity is your best line of defense against the unexpected. In essence, business continuity is just what it sounds like. It’s about resilience in the face of calamity. Business continuity involves a set of policies and procedures that lay out marching orders in the event of an emergency. More specifically, according to the ISO 22301:2012: “Business Continuity (BC) is defined as the capability of the organization to continue delivery of products or services at acceptable predefined levels following a disruptive incident.” Similarly, the same statute has this to say about related, BCM: “Business Continuity Management (BCM) is defined as a holistic management process that identifies potential threats to an organization and the impacts to business operations those threats, if realized, might cause, and which provides a framework for building organizational resilience with the capability of an effective response that safeguards the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities.” Why is Business continuity important? You didn’t build up your business simply to watch it fail. However, in 51% of cases, that’s exactly what happens after a significant loss of data. Similar studies suggest that the percentage of companies who survive such a loss could be as low as 6%. If you’re not prioritizing your business continuity, you’re putting your data at serious risk. Fail business continuity and may very well pay the price. The cost of these outages is on the rise, too. Up 38% since 2010, unplanned downtime now averages roughly $9,000 per minute, according to an Emerson Network power study. Your IT department shouldn’t be the only one prioritizing your vital information and business continuity. Don’t wait until your overworked server closet completely crashes or a natural disaster blows through taking irreplaceable data with it. Between shaken consumer confidence and high dollar annual losses, outages cost you big. While it’s impossible to plan for everything, a Business Continuity Plan (BC) offers a safety net that is designed to ensure critical pieces of your business remain up and running when the unexpected threatens to take you offline. Looking for help formulating a business continuity plan? The first step is to Contact us to see how Global IP Networks can insulate you from the direct and indirect costs of a disaster.-.