The factors that lead to the disruption of business activities – disasters, as they are often called – fall into two general categories: natural disasters, which include uncontrolled flooding, fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, disease, lightning strikes, and biological infestations; and man-made disasters, which include disruptions brought on as the result of human error, strikes, intentional sabotage, burglary, theft, IT-related faults stemming from viruses, Trojan horses, worms, denial-of-service attacks, and other breaches of computer and network security; and increasingly, disruption brought about by terrorist acts.
This document provides a guide for developing a business continuity plan. It begins by discussing the importance of business continuity planning given increasing risks from both natural and man-made disasters. It then outlines the key elements of a successful plan, including identifying mission critical systems, prioritizing services, conducting risk assessments, and identifying single points of failure. The guide recommends selecting a business continuity partner based on the breadth of their services, solution functionality, financial viability, and cost. It concludes by promoting XO Communications as a partner that can help organizations develop and implement an effective business continuity plan.
Lockbox: The Way to Win a Changing Game 2013Paul Diegelman
The document discusses challenges facing wholesale lockbox product managers, including slowing revenue growth, increasing costs, and internal competition for resources at banks. It argues that there is still a compelling business case for wholesale lockbox if product managers can reduce operational costs through outsourcing, update technologies and capabilities, and market the broader value of lockboxes for cross-selling other bank services and strengthening customer relationships. Specific strategies proposed include outsourcing processing to lower costs, investing to extend geographic footprints flexibly, and communicating lockbox's contributions beyond just fees.
Why SIP Makes Sense: Enabling the Evolution to Unified CommunicationsXO Communications
The growing proliferation of Unified Communications (UC) technology in the workplace is enabling anytime, anywhere communications. Driving UC adoption is the growth of IP telephony, which has overtaken TDM systems. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a key enabler of UC as it allows users to access content from any device on any network. SIP offers advantages like intelligence at network edges, support for mobility and virtual numbers, and business continuity during outages. As IP telephony continues to replace TDM, SIP will become increasingly important for businesses to support UC.
This infographic shows how between now and 2014 Cloud Communications, BYOD, Big Data and Social Media are going to disrupt your business network in dramatic ways.
To learn more about XO's Intelligent WAN, please visit http://www.xo.com/IntelligentWAN
The ROI of Application Performance Management Build a Business Case for Your ...XO Communications
This document discusses the ROI and business value of application performance management (APM) solutions. It provides 10 scenarios where APM can provide quantifiable benefits, including:
1) Improving production and preserving revenue by reducing downtime of critical applications. An example shows a retail chain saving $52k per outage by reducing credit card outage duration by 40%.
2) Optimizing bandwidth expenditures by right-sizing bandwidth needs based on real network usage data. An example shows a company saving $99k annually by avoiding over-provisioning bandwidth for a VoIP rollout.
3) Eliminating redundant tools and equipment by replacing needs for devices like protocol analyzers and CSU/DSUs, saving on equipment costs.
This document provides an overview of MeetXO Communications, a nationwide communications services provider focused on businesses. Some key points:
- Founded in 1996, XO has $1.5 billion in annual revenue and 4,000 employees. It serves over 90,000 business customers including 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
- XO operates a 19,000-mile Tier 1 fiber network connecting over 75 markets. It offers a portfolio of IP and networking services including broadband, Ethernet, and SIP trunking.
- XO has experienced 19% revenue growth in broadband services and a 38% increase in adjusted EBITDA in 2009. It has $363 million in cash and no debt obligations.
PBworks is a hosted collaboration platform that allows teams to work more productively together. It has over 3 million global active users across 1,000,000 projects. PBworks provides a central place for authorized users to create, store, and share information across geographic and corporate boundaries. It is more secure, reliable, and easy to use than traditional on-premise or intranet collaboration tools.
Online education is growing rapidly and is becoming more prevalent. Natural resources faculty should welcome online education for several reasons:
1) Online education is already present at many institutions and continues to grow significantly each year. It is not going away and will only become more widespread.
2) Research shows that online education can be as effective as traditional face-to-face education when done well, and may provide benefits such as increased flexibility, interaction and engagement for students.
3) Online education provides an opportunity for faculty to improve and transform their teaching through new pedagogical approaches and technologies. It encourages reflection on best practices and innovation.
While online education requires effort, it allows institutions and faculty to better meet
This document provides a guide for developing a business continuity plan. It begins by discussing the importance of business continuity planning given increasing risks from both natural and man-made disasters. It then outlines the key elements of a successful plan, including identifying mission critical systems, prioritizing services, conducting risk assessments, and identifying single points of failure. The guide recommends selecting a business continuity partner based on the breadth of their services, solution functionality, financial viability, and cost. It concludes by promoting XO Communications as a partner that can help organizations develop and implement an effective business continuity plan.
Lockbox: The Way to Win a Changing Game 2013Paul Diegelman
The document discusses challenges facing wholesale lockbox product managers, including slowing revenue growth, increasing costs, and internal competition for resources at banks. It argues that there is still a compelling business case for wholesale lockbox if product managers can reduce operational costs through outsourcing, update technologies and capabilities, and market the broader value of lockboxes for cross-selling other bank services and strengthening customer relationships. Specific strategies proposed include outsourcing processing to lower costs, investing to extend geographic footprints flexibly, and communicating lockbox's contributions beyond just fees.
Why SIP Makes Sense: Enabling the Evolution to Unified CommunicationsXO Communications
The growing proliferation of Unified Communications (UC) technology in the workplace is enabling anytime, anywhere communications. Driving UC adoption is the growth of IP telephony, which has overtaken TDM systems. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a key enabler of UC as it allows users to access content from any device on any network. SIP offers advantages like intelligence at network edges, support for mobility and virtual numbers, and business continuity during outages. As IP telephony continues to replace TDM, SIP will become increasingly important for businesses to support UC.
This infographic shows how between now and 2014 Cloud Communications, BYOD, Big Data and Social Media are going to disrupt your business network in dramatic ways.
To learn more about XO's Intelligent WAN, please visit http://www.xo.com/IntelligentWAN
The ROI of Application Performance Management Build a Business Case for Your ...XO Communications
This document discusses the ROI and business value of application performance management (APM) solutions. It provides 10 scenarios where APM can provide quantifiable benefits, including:
1) Improving production and preserving revenue by reducing downtime of critical applications. An example shows a retail chain saving $52k per outage by reducing credit card outage duration by 40%.
2) Optimizing bandwidth expenditures by right-sizing bandwidth needs based on real network usage data. An example shows a company saving $99k annually by avoiding over-provisioning bandwidth for a VoIP rollout.
3) Eliminating redundant tools and equipment by replacing needs for devices like protocol analyzers and CSU/DSUs, saving on equipment costs.
This document provides an overview of MeetXO Communications, a nationwide communications services provider focused on businesses. Some key points:
- Founded in 1996, XO has $1.5 billion in annual revenue and 4,000 employees. It serves over 90,000 business customers including 50% of Fortune 500 companies.
- XO operates a 19,000-mile Tier 1 fiber network connecting over 75 markets. It offers a portfolio of IP and networking services including broadband, Ethernet, and SIP trunking.
- XO has experienced 19% revenue growth in broadband services and a 38% increase in adjusted EBITDA in 2009. It has $363 million in cash and no debt obligations.
PBworks is a hosted collaboration platform that allows teams to work more productively together. It has over 3 million global active users across 1,000,000 projects. PBworks provides a central place for authorized users to create, store, and share information across geographic and corporate boundaries. It is more secure, reliable, and easy to use than traditional on-premise or intranet collaboration tools.
Online education is growing rapidly and is becoming more prevalent. Natural resources faculty should welcome online education for several reasons:
1) Online education is already present at many institutions and continues to grow significantly each year. It is not going away and will only become more widespread.
2) Research shows that online education can be as effective as traditional face-to-face education when done well, and may provide benefits such as increased flexibility, interaction and engagement for students.
3) Online education provides an opportunity for faculty to improve and transform their teaching through new pedagogical approaches and technologies. It encourages reflection on best practices and innovation.
While online education requires effort, it allows institutions and faculty to better meet
This document discusses business resiliency and the pitfalls organizations face in ensuring resiliency. It notes growing risks from disasters, regulations, complex supply chains and 24/7 operations. The document also discusses how organizations often focus only on compliance and checkboxes rather than true resiliency. Silos between functions like IT, business continuity and crisis management also inhibit resiliency efforts. The document argues that organizations need to take an integrated, holistic approach to resiliency that considers the full range of risks and spans functions.
5th ME Business & IT Resilience Summit 2016 - Business Resiliency PitfallsSohan Masih
This document discusses business resiliency and outlines several pitfalls organizations face in ensuring resiliency. It notes growing risks from disasters, regulations, complex supply chains and 24/7 operations. The document also outlines various compliance standards before discussing common issues like paralysis from over analysis, siloed functions within organizations, and gaps and overlaps between risk, IT and crisis management teams. It advocates expanding continuity planning to a holistic resiliency approach that manages incidents, business continuity, IT disaster recovery, crisis management and third-party governance within a common business context.
In this paper, based on a negotiation scenario, The Consultant case, we will show how to position ourselves during the several stages of a negotiation process. It intends to be a contextualized guide on the negotiators roles and behaviors leveraging their objectives on a path to establish a common goal. So, we will exemplify it combining some scenes from the film Pretty Woman in order to show the best practices in the negotiation process. In the same way, we decided to ask professional negotiators to understand which are major items they give more importance in their international deals.
Building A CFO Ready Business Case For Contract ManagementAlison Clarke
This document discusses building a business case for implementing best practices in enterprise contract management. It notes that contracts that are not well-managed can be a liability rather than an asset. It identifies common problems with contract management like lack of searchable repositories and inability to manage milestones. Implementing best practices like centralized contract repositories and standardized processes can help organizations reduce costs, improve compliance and gain efficiencies. The document provides questions to help organizations assess their needs and outlines how to quantify potential cost savings and benefits to make a strong case to secure funding for new contract management solutions and processes.
CobiT, ITIL, ISO and other frameworks help build security from the top down and bottom up. While they provide benefits, there are also costs to consider. Implementing them over 18-48 months can reduce costs compared to rushing implementation. These frameworks don't need to be implemented exclusively top-down, and allowing bottom-up input can improve communication and wisdom. Visible Ops approaches provide methods to phase in frameworks over time in a controlled manner that balances compliance and agility.
This document discusses the risks of outsourcing software development projects offshore. It identifies the five most common risks as: misunderstanding requirements, quality assurance issues, intellectual property protection, differing internal processes, and communication barriers due to cultural/language differences. For each risk, it provides details on how the risk can occur and recommendations for mitigating the risk, such as clearly documenting requirements before starting development to prevent misunderstandings. The key message is that identifying and addressing these risks early is important for avoiding problems that can undermine the benefits of outsourcing.
This document provides an introduction and summary of the book "The Performance Manager". It discusses how the book builds on insights from "The Multidimensional Manager" published over 10 years ago. The introduction highlights that global competition has intensified the need for companies to have deep customer insights and focus on profitability. It also summarizes McKinsey research finding that competitive advantage is now hardest to achieve in industries involving complex "tacit" work rather than standardized transactions. The Performance Manager aims to provide lessons on how companies can better leverage information to support high-value decision-makers and deliver sustainable competitive advantages through higher revenue, lower costs, and optimized assets.
This document discusses how to effectively plan, manage, and deliver on IT's promise to businesses. It notes that while IT plays an integral role in today's businesses, many companies do not approach major IT initiatives in a businesslike way by failing to tie large IT investments and decisions to clearly defined business results. The document outlines Crowe's IT advisory solution which provides a methodology for developing an appropriate IT strategy, making sound IT investment decisions, and executing and managing initiatives in a way that relates them to organizational performance measures. It also discusses common issues businesses face with IT and how critical business events can trigger the need for improved IT management.
Unified Comms Exploring Attitudes Towards Riskrosiegregory
The document discusses risks facing UK businesses and their attitudes towards risk management. Some key findings include:
- 61% of businesses surveyed say they have become more focused on risk in the last three years. However, smaller businesses are less likely to have formal business continuity plans.
- Risks are categorized into two tiers: tier one technology risks like IT and telecom failures, and tier two "talent" and environmental risks. Technology is seen as both a risk and a solution.
- Flexible working enabled by technology is seen as important for retaining employees, though talent risks are still not as high a priority as technology risks for most businesses.
- The closing comments encourage businesses to take a systematic
The document provided an overview of a Misys BankFusion analyst and investor event. Key points included:
1. BankFusion was presented as a new core banking solution from Misys that allows flexibility and cost reduction for banks.
2. Industry analysts views on BankFusion highlighted its potential as a modern banking system and highest integration score.
3. The event outlined BankFusion's strategic focus on internal renovation of existing Misys customers and providing an external renovation platform for other legacy systems.
4. Customer examples demonstrated BankFusion upgrades from Bankmaster and Equation as well as a new implementation at TIME Bank.
Nearly two thirds (62%) of managers report that cyber security threats are increasingly posing a serious risk to their business, with nearly a third of UK organisations (32%) having come under a cyber attack of some sort in the past 12 months, according to new research published by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) today.
Whitepaper Cloud Financials Come Of Age Pdfjingels72
The document discusses the advantages of cloud financial solutions compared to on-premise software. It notes that cloud financials provide financial advantages like lower costs and quicker time to value. They also provide technology advantages such as continuous innovation, customization, integration support, and access to leading technologies. Additionally, cloud financials provide operational advantages like requiring fewer technical resources and allowing companies to focus on their core business rather than IT maintenance. The document argues that cloud financials are well-suited for small and mid-sized businesses seeking scalable and affordable financial systems.
Six truths BtoB marketers must accept to be successful with marketing automation:
1. Marketing automation requires developing a strong process and filling marketing skills gaps.
2. Process is key - marketers must define stages of the marketing funnel and how leads will be nurtured.
3. The buying process has changed - buyers do extensive research online before engaging with sales.
4. Content is important to support buyers at each stage and overcome their objections.
5. Lead nurturing provides value to prospects and drives greater conversion than just generating leads.
6. Marketers may lack skills for deep use of automation and will need training, new hires, or an agency.
The ability to execute virtual projects – projects where the team members seldom or never meet physically – is becoming an increasingly important capability for international organizations. This paper identifies five factors that determine the success or failure of virtual projects, and discusses how to build the capability to execute virtual projects effectively, including those currently thought too small to be viable.
The document discusses improving project portfolio management through portfolio decision optimization (PDO). Few IT projects are successful due to misalignment with strategies and poor decisions based on uncertain information. PDO can treat portfolio management as a dynamic decision-making process by fusing uncertain data using Bayesian Team Support (BTS), a patented decision support engine. BTS answers key portfolio questions, considers risks and uncertainties, and ranks projects to optimize the portfolio. Integrating BTS into traditional portfolio management systems can improve decision-making and project success rates.
Business Continuity Management - Operational & Cyber Resilience Part 1 (whi...Richard Brooks
A structured approach to developing, implementing and running a Business Continuity Management (BCM) program is often seen as a tedious and complicated task requiring deep expertise and knowledge. BCM programs built with conventional tools also run the risk of becoming outdated quickly. It is no wonder that many risk departments in the corporate sector often still see BCM as the unwanted step- sibling, despite its importance for contributing to revenue growth.
A successful BCM plan will not only maintain operations during times of crisis or disaster, but also minimise cost and reduce damage and recovery time.
The document outlines the top 10 pitfalls of application management services. It discusses issues like poorly managed transitions from sales to delivery, lack of application portfolio rationalization, unclear definitions of quality and metrics, poor communication, insufficient governance, and lack of innovation in partnerships. The document provides recommendations to avoid these pitfalls like comprehensive planning, establishing governance structures, and focusing on continuous improvement.
SIP is a signaling protocol that is enabling unified communications applications by allowing IP-based communications to be extended across different networks, devices, and transport mediums. Key advantages of SIP include supporting mobility, virtual numbers, and business continuity. SIP trunking provides cost benefits like reduced network service costs by converging voice and data on a single IP connection. Considerations for SIP implementation include ensuring interoperability between systems, implementing security measures like encryption, and properly provisioning E911 services for mobile users.
Forrester Survey sponsored by Juniper: Building for the Next Billion - What t...XO Communications
This document discusses the priorities, needs, and views of IT organizations regarding their networks and infrastructure. It contains the results of surveys that find:
- Supporting business initiatives like mobility, data analytics, and cloud computing are top priorities for networks. Respondents want networks that are secure, high-performing, cost-effective and easy to manage.
- Increasing data storage needs are driven by business growth, more data per activity, and increased regulatory requirements.
- Cloud resources, data center consolidation, big data infrastructure, and video streaming will significantly impact networks over the next year as organizations pursue digital transformation.
- Characteristics like control, flexibility, reliability and cost management are important for networks to
This document discusses business resiliency and the pitfalls organizations face in ensuring resiliency. It notes growing risks from disasters, regulations, complex supply chains and 24/7 operations. The document also discusses how organizations often focus only on compliance and checkboxes rather than true resiliency. Silos between functions like IT, business continuity and crisis management also inhibit resiliency efforts. The document argues that organizations need to take an integrated, holistic approach to resiliency that considers the full range of risks and spans functions.
5th ME Business & IT Resilience Summit 2016 - Business Resiliency PitfallsSohan Masih
This document discusses business resiliency and outlines several pitfalls organizations face in ensuring resiliency. It notes growing risks from disasters, regulations, complex supply chains and 24/7 operations. The document also outlines various compliance standards before discussing common issues like paralysis from over analysis, siloed functions within organizations, and gaps and overlaps between risk, IT and crisis management teams. It advocates expanding continuity planning to a holistic resiliency approach that manages incidents, business continuity, IT disaster recovery, crisis management and third-party governance within a common business context.
In this paper, based on a negotiation scenario, The Consultant case, we will show how to position ourselves during the several stages of a negotiation process. It intends to be a contextualized guide on the negotiators roles and behaviors leveraging their objectives on a path to establish a common goal. So, we will exemplify it combining some scenes from the film Pretty Woman in order to show the best practices in the negotiation process. In the same way, we decided to ask professional negotiators to understand which are major items they give more importance in their international deals.
Building A CFO Ready Business Case For Contract ManagementAlison Clarke
This document discusses building a business case for implementing best practices in enterprise contract management. It notes that contracts that are not well-managed can be a liability rather than an asset. It identifies common problems with contract management like lack of searchable repositories and inability to manage milestones. Implementing best practices like centralized contract repositories and standardized processes can help organizations reduce costs, improve compliance and gain efficiencies. The document provides questions to help organizations assess their needs and outlines how to quantify potential cost savings and benefits to make a strong case to secure funding for new contract management solutions and processes.
CobiT, ITIL, ISO and other frameworks help build security from the top down and bottom up. While they provide benefits, there are also costs to consider. Implementing them over 18-48 months can reduce costs compared to rushing implementation. These frameworks don't need to be implemented exclusively top-down, and allowing bottom-up input can improve communication and wisdom. Visible Ops approaches provide methods to phase in frameworks over time in a controlled manner that balances compliance and agility.
This document discusses the risks of outsourcing software development projects offshore. It identifies the five most common risks as: misunderstanding requirements, quality assurance issues, intellectual property protection, differing internal processes, and communication barriers due to cultural/language differences. For each risk, it provides details on how the risk can occur and recommendations for mitigating the risk, such as clearly documenting requirements before starting development to prevent misunderstandings. The key message is that identifying and addressing these risks early is important for avoiding problems that can undermine the benefits of outsourcing.
This document provides an introduction and summary of the book "The Performance Manager". It discusses how the book builds on insights from "The Multidimensional Manager" published over 10 years ago. The introduction highlights that global competition has intensified the need for companies to have deep customer insights and focus on profitability. It also summarizes McKinsey research finding that competitive advantage is now hardest to achieve in industries involving complex "tacit" work rather than standardized transactions. The Performance Manager aims to provide lessons on how companies can better leverage information to support high-value decision-makers and deliver sustainable competitive advantages through higher revenue, lower costs, and optimized assets.
This document discusses how to effectively plan, manage, and deliver on IT's promise to businesses. It notes that while IT plays an integral role in today's businesses, many companies do not approach major IT initiatives in a businesslike way by failing to tie large IT investments and decisions to clearly defined business results. The document outlines Crowe's IT advisory solution which provides a methodology for developing an appropriate IT strategy, making sound IT investment decisions, and executing and managing initiatives in a way that relates them to organizational performance measures. It also discusses common issues businesses face with IT and how critical business events can trigger the need for improved IT management.
Unified Comms Exploring Attitudes Towards Riskrosiegregory
The document discusses risks facing UK businesses and their attitudes towards risk management. Some key findings include:
- 61% of businesses surveyed say they have become more focused on risk in the last three years. However, smaller businesses are less likely to have formal business continuity plans.
- Risks are categorized into two tiers: tier one technology risks like IT and telecom failures, and tier two "talent" and environmental risks. Technology is seen as both a risk and a solution.
- Flexible working enabled by technology is seen as important for retaining employees, though talent risks are still not as high a priority as technology risks for most businesses.
- The closing comments encourage businesses to take a systematic
The document provided an overview of a Misys BankFusion analyst and investor event. Key points included:
1. BankFusion was presented as a new core banking solution from Misys that allows flexibility and cost reduction for banks.
2. Industry analysts views on BankFusion highlighted its potential as a modern banking system and highest integration score.
3. The event outlined BankFusion's strategic focus on internal renovation of existing Misys customers and providing an external renovation platform for other legacy systems.
4. Customer examples demonstrated BankFusion upgrades from Bankmaster and Equation as well as a new implementation at TIME Bank.
Nearly two thirds (62%) of managers report that cyber security threats are increasingly posing a serious risk to their business, with nearly a third of UK organisations (32%) having come under a cyber attack of some sort in the past 12 months, according to new research published by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) today.
Whitepaper Cloud Financials Come Of Age Pdfjingels72
The document discusses the advantages of cloud financial solutions compared to on-premise software. It notes that cloud financials provide financial advantages like lower costs and quicker time to value. They also provide technology advantages such as continuous innovation, customization, integration support, and access to leading technologies. Additionally, cloud financials provide operational advantages like requiring fewer technical resources and allowing companies to focus on their core business rather than IT maintenance. The document argues that cloud financials are well-suited for small and mid-sized businesses seeking scalable and affordable financial systems.
Six truths BtoB marketers must accept to be successful with marketing automation:
1. Marketing automation requires developing a strong process and filling marketing skills gaps.
2. Process is key - marketers must define stages of the marketing funnel and how leads will be nurtured.
3. The buying process has changed - buyers do extensive research online before engaging with sales.
4. Content is important to support buyers at each stage and overcome their objections.
5. Lead nurturing provides value to prospects and drives greater conversion than just generating leads.
6. Marketers may lack skills for deep use of automation and will need training, new hires, or an agency.
The ability to execute virtual projects – projects where the team members seldom or never meet physically – is becoming an increasingly important capability for international organizations. This paper identifies five factors that determine the success or failure of virtual projects, and discusses how to build the capability to execute virtual projects effectively, including those currently thought too small to be viable.
The document discusses improving project portfolio management through portfolio decision optimization (PDO). Few IT projects are successful due to misalignment with strategies and poor decisions based on uncertain information. PDO can treat portfolio management as a dynamic decision-making process by fusing uncertain data using Bayesian Team Support (BTS), a patented decision support engine. BTS answers key portfolio questions, considers risks and uncertainties, and ranks projects to optimize the portfolio. Integrating BTS into traditional portfolio management systems can improve decision-making and project success rates.
Business Continuity Management - Operational & Cyber Resilience Part 1 (whi...Richard Brooks
A structured approach to developing, implementing and running a Business Continuity Management (BCM) program is often seen as a tedious and complicated task requiring deep expertise and knowledge. BCM programs built with conventional tools also run the risk of becoming outdated quickly. It is no wonder that many risk departments in the corporate sector often still see BCM as the unwanted step- sibling, despite its importance for contributing to revenue growth.
A successful BCM plan will not only maintain operations during times of crisis or disaster, but also minimise cost and reduce damage and recovery time.
The document outlines the top 10 pitfalls of application management services. It discusses issues like poorly managed transitions from sales to delivery, lack of application portfolio rationalization, unclear definitions of quality and metrics, poor communication, insufficient governance, and lack of innovation in partnerships. The document provides recommendations to avoid these pitfalls like comprehensive planning, establishing governance structures, and focusing on continuous improvement.
Ähnlich wie Business Continuity Planning Guide (20)
SIP is a signaling protocol that is enabling unified communications applications by allowing IP-based communications to be extended across different networks, devices, and transport mediums. Key advantages of SIP include supporting mobility, virtual numbers, and business continuity. SIP trunking provides cost benefits like reduced network service costs by converging voice and data on a single IP connection. Considerations for SIP implementation include ensuring interoperability between systems, implementing security measures like encryption, and properly provisioning E911 services for mobile users.
Forrester Survey sponsored by Juniper: Building for the Next Billion - What t...XO Communications
This document discusses the priorities, needs, and views of IT organizations regarding their networks and infrastructure. It contains the results of surveys that find:
- Supporting business initiatives like mobility, data analytics, and cloud computing are top priorities for networks. Respondents want networks that are secure, high-performing, cost-effective and easy to manage.
- Increasing data storage needs are driven by business growth, more data per activity, and increased regulatory requirements.
- Cloud resources, data center consolidation, big data infrastructure, and video streaming will significantly impact networks over the next year as organizations pursue digital transformation.
- Characteristics like control, flexibility, reliability and cost management are important for networks to
It's common business policy for organizations of a certain size to have two data centers as part of a disaster recovery or business continuity plan. However, most enterprise - applications are not designed for or intended to use systems in two different locations.
Enter the notion of a data center interconnect, which extends an Ethernet network between two physically separate data centers. While the idea is simple, Ethernet wasn't designed to run across a wide area network. Thus, a DCI implementation requires a variety of technological fixes to work around Ethernet's limitations.
This report outlines the issues that complicate DCIs, such as loops that can bring down networks and traffic trombones that eat up bandwidth. It also examines the variety of options companies have to connect two or more data centers, including dark fiber, MPLS services and MLAG, as well as vendor specific options such as Cisco OTV and HP EVI. The report looks at the pros and cons of each option.
Dynamic Performance Acceleration - Reducing the Browser BottleneckXO Communications
This document describes Dynamic Performance Acceleration technology from XO Communications. It aims to optimize websites to reduce time-to-action, the amount of time until a user can interact with a page. It does this through techniques like prioritizing above-the-fold content, image combining, and script optimization. Dynamic Performance Acceleration analyzes pages and rewrites elements to accelerate loading without requiring changes from website owners. It provides these services through a global cloud platform with no hardware required.
Because email and messaging capabilities are so critical, they have in some respects become like a utility: like electricity, for example, email is so critical to the operation of any organization that it no longer provides any substantive competitive differentiation between companies. Like other utilities, then, the goal is to a) ensure that service remains available as close to 100% of the time as possible while b) simultaneously being provided as inexpensively as possible. For many organizations, managing email internally is a thing of the past, just like producing one's own electricity is a concept of the past.
A growing number of organizations are finding that the way to accomplish this through the use of Microsoft Exchange as a hosted service, a model in which a remote third party provider manages all backend services for a flat monthly per user fee. The advantages of this approach for organizations that want to realize the benefits of Exchange are that uptime of the Exchange infrastructure can be very high and the cost of managing Exchange can be reduced significantly - typically more than 50% compared to on-premises management. Further, the use of a hosted Exchange service allows an in-house IT staff to be deployed to other projects that will provide more value to the organization as a whole.
This white paper discusses the benefits of the hosted model for managing Exchange. It also lays out the detailed costs of managing a hosted versus an on-premise Exchange environment.
Businesses demand more intelligent, flexible networks to support a massive influx in Big Data, Mobile, Cloud and Social Media. For more information please visit: http://bit.ly/1bNJUz1
From the Network to Multi-Cloud: How to Chart an Integrated StrategyXO Communications
This presentation served as a basis for the November 2013 webinar featuring David Linthicum, cloud technology expert, and Sam Koetter, Sr. Product Manager, Ethernet Services, XO Communications. The speakers discussed the emerging patterns of multi-clouds and their applications within the enterprise. They also looked at the importance of the network in support of cloud services, and why selecting the right network infrastructure is as important as selecting the right cloud providers.
Topics explored include:
• The emerging use of multi-cloud solutions and the changing network requirements around this movement
• How to define your network strategy with a cloud strategy in mind. A stepwise approach that most enterprises should follow
• How to select a strategic network partner around your multi-cloud services. What you should look for to be successful the first time
• How to create a master implementation plan and budget. A strategy to make sure both cloud and network resources will be there to support the core business.
Find out -- from cloud industry insiders -- how to navigate the confluence of network and multi-cloud solutions.
Find out more about XO's network solutions: http://bit.ly/1g6QYLr.
View the entire webinar replay on the XO Communications YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/PaGkYmFuq6k.
Application Performance Management: Intelligence for an Optimized WANXO Communications
With application performance management in place, businesses can identify (and resolve) issues on the network faster, provision the bandwidth to support applications more accurately, and plan network upgrades and other tasks with more efficiency.
The benefits of MPLS IP VPN networks are already being realized by many enterprises. In addition to maximizing performance while minimizing costs, MPLS VPNs offer the ability to prioritize applications such as VoIP by class of service (CoS), create and improve disaster recovery infrastructures, utilize a fully meshed infrastructure that replaces outdated hub and spoke architecture, and reduce complexity to simplify network management in an increasingly complex landscape.
When considering a migration to MPLS VPN, there are several key considerations that can significantly impact the process of planning, implementing and managing the network, as MPLS has some unique requirements and tasks associated with managing and administering the network. This white paper will explore some of those considerations and discuss how they can be addressed.
A Business Guide to MPLS IP VPN Migration: Five Critical FactorsXO Communications
Multi-Protocol Label Switching Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network, or MPLS IP VPN, refers to a VPN service enabled over a trusted provider’s private MPLS core backbone. It delivers the flexibility of an IP service with the essential service quality, performance, and security previously available only with legacy technologies. Other benefits include cost-effective security, any-to-any connectivity, Quality of Service, scalable bandwidth, and a platform for convergence.
Intro to Voice over Internet Protocol: What does VoIP Mean for My Business?XO Communications
Savatar, a strategy and technology consulting firm, and XO Communications,
a leading provider of telecommunications services for businesses, explain
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) from the perspective of small and medium-
sized business (SMB) owners, specifically SMBs who are seriously considering
moving to VoIP, but are unsure what approach is right for them. This
paper presents key findings of a Savatar survey in which 500 SMB owners
and decision makers were asked how they thought a VoIP system would compare
to their current phone system in four areas: cost, system management,
migration to a new system, and feature availability. Key benefits of VoIP for
business include reliability and efficiency, cost savings, and convenience.
Avoid Three Common Pitfalls With VoIP Readiness AssessmentsXO Communications
The document discusses common pitfalls that enterprises face when conducting voice over IP (VoIP) readiness assessments. It identifies three main pitfalls: 1) relying on a single snapshot assessment that does not account for network changes over time, 2) believing that synthetic VoIP calls alone are sufficient to test readiness without considering impacts to other traffic, and 3) focusing solely on the initial assessment and not planning for ongoing monitoring and management after VoIP deployment. It recommends best practices for VoIP assessments that involve continuous monitoring, adding real VoIP traffic to assessments, and managing converged voice and data networks after deployment.
This paper outlines five critical factors for successful migration to MultiProtocol
Label Switching (MPLS) Internet Protocol (IP) Virtual Private Networks
(VPNs). Written for business executives and IT decision makers, the paper
discusses the current status of MPLS IP VPN adoption for the medium-to-large
business (5 to 50 locations), especially with regard to the evolving (and expanding)
role of MPLS technology. The paper also identifies key questions you
should ask before migrating from a legacy infrastructure to an MPLS-enabled IP
VPN, discusses the benefits of migration, describes the types of companies that
would benefit from MPLS IP VPNs, and suggests what a business should look
for in an MPLS provider. The good news is that the early adopters of the technology
have implemented MPLS with great success, particularly as it relates to
network performance. The time has come for mass migration to the technology.
In enterprises today, Wide Area Networks (WANs) are no
longer operating behind the scenes. WANs are central to
the daily operations and core business of organizations large
and small. However, enterprises must choose from a variety
of ways to implement WANs. This eBook examines the
various types of Wide Area Networks (WANs), and why
IT departments gravitate towards specific WAN solutions.
In addition, the paper provides constructive guidelines
for organizations seeking Local Area to Wide Area
Network extension.
This document provides a checklist for planning a WAN (wide area network), outlining key areas to consider including overall objectives, costs and ease of management, enterprise-wide traffic capacity, location considerations, redundancy, user and access needs, applications and bandwidth requirements, and security concerns. It suggests questions in each area to help evaluate network migration and extension plans for the entire enterprise. The checklist is intended to help WAN planners design a total solution that meets all connectivity, performance and protection needs across all locations.
Cloud Communications: Top 5 Advantages for Your EnterpriseXO Communications
Make no mistake about it: Cloud technologies are here, they’re real, and they’re the answer to your most vexing communications problems. Let’s begin our discussion with a quick overview of generic cloud-based technology. Keep reading.
Implementing SIP Trunking: Keys to Ensuring InteroperabilityXO Communications
These are the slides used during the webinar hosted by Enterprise Connect. Steve Carter and Sorell Slaymaker were the speakers.
The event was sponsored by XO Communications.
Level 3 Global Crossing Merger Not in Public InterestXO Communications
XO Communications opposes the proposed merger between Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing, arguing it would dominate the internet backbone market with a 55% share and harm competition. The new company, Level Crossing, would control internet traffic flows and have power to raise prices for ISPs, content providers, and end users, threatening the open internet. XO believes the merger should be rejected by regulators to maintain competition and broadband affordability.
Driving Business Innovation: Latest Generative AI Advancements & Success StorySafe Software
Are you ready to revolutionize how you handle data? Join us for a webinar where we’ll bring you up to speed with the latest advancements in Generative AI technology and discover how leveraging FME with tools from giants like Google Gemini, Amazon, and Microsoft OpenAI can supercharge your workflow efficiency.
During the hour, we’ll take you through:
Guest Speaker Segment with Hannah Barrington: Dive into the world of dynamic real estate marketing with Hannah, the Marketing Manager at Workspace Group. Hear firsthand how their team generates engaging descriptions for thousands of office units by integrating diverse data sources—from PDF floorplans to web pages—using FME transformers, like OpenAIVisionConnector and AnthropicVisionConnector. This use case will show you how GenAI can streamline content creation for marketing across the board.
Ollama Use Case: Learn how Scenario Specialist Dmitri Bagh has utilized Ollama within FME to input data, create custom models, and enhance security protocols. This segment will include demos to illustrate the full capabilities of FME in AI-driven processes.
Custom AI Models: Discover how to leverage FME to build personalized AI models using your data. Whether it’s populating a model with local data for added security or integrating public AI tools, find out how FME facilitates a versatile and secure approach to AI.
We’ll wrap up with a live Q&A session where you can engage with our experts on your specific use cases, and learn more about optimizing your data workflows with AI.
This webinar is ideal for professionals seeking to harness the power of AI within their data management systems while ensuring high levels of customization and security. Whether you're a novice or an expert, gain actionable insights and strategies to elevate your data processes. Join us to see how FME and AI can revolutionize how you work with data!
Building Production Ready Search Pipelines with Spark and MilvusZilliz
Spark is the widely used ETL tool for processing, indexing and ingesting data to serving stack for search. Milvus is the production-ready open-source vector database. In this talk we will show how to use Spark to process unstructured data to extract vector representations, and push the vectors to Milvus vector database for search serving.
Digital Marketing Trends in 2024 | Guide for Staying AheadWask
https://www.wask.co/ebooks/digital-marketing-trends-in-2024
Feeling lost in the digital marketing whirlwind of 2024? Technology is changing, consumer habits are evolving, and staying ahead of the curve feels like a never-ending pursuit. This e-book is your compass. Dive into actionable insights to handle the complexities of modern marketing. From hyper-personalization to the power of user-generated content, learn how to build long-term relationships with your audience and unlock the secrets to success in the ever-shifting digital landscape.
Ocean lotus Threat actors project by John Sitima 2024 (1).pptxSitimaJohn
Ocean Lotus cyber threat actors represent a sophisticated, persistent, and politically motivated group that poses a significant risk to organizations and individuals in the Southeast Asian region. Their continuous evolution and adaptability underscore the need for robust cybersecurity measures and international cooperation to identify and mitigate the threats posed by such advanced persistent threat groups.
Fueling AI with Great Data with Airbyte WebinarZilliz
This talk will focus on how to collect data from a variety of sources, leveraging this data for RAG and other GenAI use cases, and finally charting your course to productionalization.
Project Management Semester Long Project - Acuityjpupo2018
Acuity is an innovative learning app designed to transform the way you engage with knowledge. Powered by AI technology, Acuity takes complex topics and distills them into concise, interactive summaries that are easy to read & understand. Whether you're exploring the depths of quantum mechanics or seeking insight into historical events, Acuity provides the key information you need without the burden of lengthy texts.
Salesforce Integration for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions A...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on integration of Salesforce with Bonterra Impact Management.
Interested in deploying an integration with Salesforce for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Generating privacy-protected synthetic data using Secludy and MilvusZilliz
During this demo, the founders of Secludy will demonstrate how their system utilizes Milvus to store and manipulate embeddings for generating privacy-protected synthetic data. Their approach not only maintains the confidentiality of the original data but also enhances the utility and scalability of LLMs under privacy constraints. Attendees, including machine learning engineers, data scientists, and data managers, will witness first-hand how Secludy's integration with Milvus empowers organizations to harness the power of LLMs securely and efficiently.
AI 101: An Introduction to the Basics and Impact of Artificial IntelligenceIndexBug
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Skybuffer SAM4U tool for SAP license adoptionTatiana Kojar
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SAM4U, an SAP complimentary software asset management tool for customers, delivers a detailed and well-structured overview of license inventory and usage with a user-friendly interface. We offer a hosted, cost-effective, and performance-optimized SAM4U setup in the Skybuffer Cloud environment. You retain ownership of the system and data, while we manage the ABAP 7.58 infrastructure, ensuring fixed Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and exceptional services through the SAP Fiori interface.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of technologies, XML continues to play a vital role in structuring, storing, and transporting data across diverse systems. The recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) present new methodologies for enhancing XML development workflows, introducing efficiency, automation, and intelligent capabilities. This presentation will outline the scope and perspective of utilizing AI in XML development. The potential benefits and the possible pitfalls will be highlighted, providing a balanced view of the subject.
We will explore the capabilities of AI in understanding XML markup languages and autonomously creating structured XML content. Additionally, we will examine the capacity of AI to enrich plain text with appropriate XML markup. Practical examples and methodological guidelines will be provided to elucidate how AI can be effectively prompted to interpret and generate accurate XML markup.
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The discussion will extend to how AI can be used to transform XML content. In particular, the focus will be on the use of AI XPath extension functions in XSLT, Schematron, Schematron Quick Fixes, or for XML content refactoring.
The presentation aims to deliver a comprehensive overview of AI usage in XML development, providing attendees with the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions. Whether you’re at the early stages of adopting AI or considering integrating it in advanced XML development, this presentation will cover all levels of expertise.
By highlighting the potential advantages and challenges of integrating AI with XML development tools and languages, the presentation seeks to inspire thoughtful conversation around the future of XML development. We’ll not only delve into the technical aspects of AI-powered XML development but also discuss practical implications and possible future directions.
Ivanti’s Patch Tuesday breakdown goes beyond patching your applications and brings you the intelligence and guidance needed to prioritize where to focus your attention first. Catch early analysis on our Ivanti blog, then join industry expert Chris Goettl for the Patch Tuesday Webinar Event. There we’ll do a deep dive into each of the bulletins and give guidance on the risks associated with the newly-identified vulnerabilities.
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BuSineSS Continuity
Planning guide
Table of Contents
Summary of Guide 4
Why Business Continuity Is Needed 4
Sobering Facts 5
Elements of Success: 5
Determining Resiliency Requirements
Identification of Mission-Critical Systems 6
Prioritizing Services into Risk Tolerance Tiers 6
Conducting a Systematic Risk Assessment 7
Elements of the Plan 7
Identifying Points of Failure 7
Assessing the Pros and Cons 8
of a Business Continuity Partner
Selecting a Vendor Partner 8
#1: Breadth and Richness of Services 9
#2: Solution Functionality 9
#3: Financial Viability 9
#4: Cost 9
Project Assessment 10
Summary of Recommendations 10
XO Communications as a 11
Business Continuity Partner
Conclusion 11
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Summary of guide Why Business Continuity is needed
Business continuity, also referred to as disaster recovery, It was a business-as-usual day in the switching center. The
is one of the most-talked about – and worrisome – building served well over 100,000 subscribers, six hospi-
topics in industry today. Whether you are a five-person tals, 11 firehouses, three post offices, a police station, nine
schools and three universities. Like most central offices, this
small business determined to protect the integrity of one was completely invisible to the public. It was just a big,
the day’s receipts, or a multinational corporation con- windowless structure.
cerned about Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, shareholder
comfort and revenue assurance, the issues are similar. Just after midnight, a relatively inconsequential piece of
power equipment in the cable vault shorted and spit a few
The factors that lead to the disruption of business activities sparks into the air. One of the sparks fell on a piece of
– disasters, as they are often called – fall into two general insulation and began to smolder. The insulation melted and
categories: natural disasters, which include uncontrolled began to burn, changing from a smoldering spot on the
flooding, fire, earthquakes, hurricanes, typhoons, mudslides, surface of a cable to a full-blown fire.
disease, lightning strikes, and biological infestations; and
man-made disasters, which include disruptions brought on The fire burned its way up the cables, spreading from floor
as the result of human error, strikes, intentional sabotage, to floor. Soon the building was engulfed, and the world was
burglary, theft, IT-related faults stemming from viruses, about to see the single worst disaster that any American
Trojan horses, worms, denial-of-service attacks, and other telephone company had ever experienced.
breaches of computer and network security; and increas-
Emergency services vehicles converged on the now evacu-
ingly, disruption brought about by terrorist acts.
ated building. They flooded the lower floors with hundreds
For the most part, natural disasters are unavoidable; dealing of thousands of gallons of water, severely damaging what-
with them tends to be a matter of preparedness and recovery ever equipment remained functional.
as well as an avoidance strategy. Man-made disasters, on
Two days later the fire was finally out and engineers were
the other hand, can for the most part be avoided (or their
able to enter the building to assess the damage. On the first
impact minimized) through prudent IT management prac-
floor, the 240-foot main distribution frame was reduced
tices and adherence to a well-designed Business Continuity
to a puddle of iron. Water had ruined the power equipment
Plan. In aviation, the phrase that is drilled into every pilot’s
in the basement. Four switching offices on the lower floors
head as their operating mantra is “Always plan your flight,
were completely destroyed. Cable distribution ducts
and always fly your plan.” The same rules apply in business
were deformed and useless. Carrier equipment on the
continuity: Build a plan, and stick to it. Your discipline will
second floor was destroyed. And 170,000 telephones were
be well-rewarded.
out of service.
This paper is a practical guide for businesses concerned
Within an hour of discovering the fire the company mobi-
with ensuring their own continuity in the event that an
lized its forces to restore service to the affected area, and
unavoidable disruption challenges their ability to operate in
resources converged on the building to coordinate the
a business-as-usual fashion. We begin with a rather sobering
effort that would last just under a month and cost more
discussion about the need for business continuity planning,
than $90 million.
followed by an in-depth section about the steps involved in
creating a plan: identifying mission-critical systems; con- Within 24 hours, service had been restored to all medical,
ducting risk assessments; creating “strata” of risk tolerance police and fire facilities. The day after the fire, a new main
for business systems; locating single points of failure; select- distribution frame had been located and was shipped to the
ing partners for business continuity resources; and finally, building. Luckily, the third floor had been vacant and was
identifying the steps required to ensure effective business therefore available as a staging area to assemble and install
process continuity and data recovery. the 240-foot-long iron frame. Under normal circumstances,
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from the time a frame is ordered, shipped and installed Consider these simple facts. The economic impact of a sin-
in an office, six months elapse. This frame was ordered, gle intrusion, such as a denial-of-service attack, is roughly $1
shipped, installed, wired and tested - in four days. million, an expense that could be prevented enterprise-wide
through the deployment of a simple firewall. It gets worse:
It is almost impossible to understand the magnitude of the in 2004, five years ago, the average large business spent $55
restoration effort, but this may help. 6,000 tons of debris million per year to protect itself from viruses, Trojan horses,
were removed from the building and 3,000 tons of equip- and worms, $26 million against denial of service attacks,
ment were installed including 1.2 billion feet of under- and a comparatively paltry $12 million to guard against
ground wire, 8.6 million feet of frame wire, 525,000 linear physical theft . And why are they willing to spend so much
feet of exchange cable, and 380 million conductor feet of on cyber-protection? Because 93% of companies that lose
switchboard cable. 5 million underground splices hooked access to the information in their data centers for 10 days or
it all together. And 30 trucking companies, 11 airlines, more will file for bankruptcy protection within a year of the
and 4,000 people were pressed into service. And just after loss. Can they afford not to spend the money?
midnight on March 21st, 22 days following the fire, service
from the building was restored. Forrester Research has extensively studied Business Con-
tinuity practices and there is much to be learned from
How was this possible? Two factors contributed to the suc- them . Most companies recognize the need to improve their
cess of the restoral effort. First and foremost, the company preparedness for disruptive events, and when asked why
had resources it could call on when needed, and the ability they are doing so the list narrows to six primary drivers:
to deploy them. the increasing cost (and impact) of system downtime; the
need to be online, available and therefore competitive in
Second, they understood the nature of their business: What
an increasingly globalized (and therefore around-the-clock)
was critical and what wasn’t. The fact that they restored
market; the need to satisfy financial responsibilities; the
emergency services first and consumer telephones second
need to take steps to reduce increasing levels of enterprise
said a great deal about the degree to which they had though
risk; the desire to increase the availability (and survivability)
the scenario through. They knew which services posed the
of a critical business application; and finally, the require-
highest risk and dealt with them first.
ment to ensure compliance with regulatory or legal man-
Business continuity imperatives haven’t changed much dates such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and CALEA.
since this disaster took place; technology has evolved, busi-
So why is business continuity planning required? Besides
nesses have become more sophisticated, the global nature
the obvious answer – the need to protect critical business
of the world’s economy now dictates that businesses operate
resources in order to protect revenue-generating customer
around the clock, but one singular mandate remains the
services – it is because “chance favors the prepared mind.”
same: be prepared.
The better prepared an organization is for the possibility of a
disruptive event, the more rapidly the event will be resolved.
SOBering FaCTS
Every day, 30 billion text messages, 40 billion e-mail elements of Success:
messages, 19 billion mobile minutes, 30 billion PSTN min-
utes travel the world’s telecommunications networks.
determining resiliency requirements
As if that weren’t enough, eight exabytes (that’s 18 zeroes) One element of business continuity planning is disaster
of global IP traffic are generated every month, a number recovery preparedness. And while disaster recovery is an
that’s expected to increase to a zettabyte (21 zeroes) by 2015. important element of any prudent IT strategy, disaster
The problem with those numbers is not their magnitude: avoidance – the process of taking steps to avoid the impact
It’s the nature of their intent. A large percentage of those of a disastrous event when it occurs - is at least as important.
messages are destined for enterprise networks, and a small Because these disruptions are largely unanticipated, a collec-
percentage of those aren’t friendly – they are intended to tion of up-front efforts can reduce the downtime – and cost
disrupt business operations.
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– associated with disastrous events. These efforts, which we We’re talking about a single laptop here – not the far more
will describe in the sections that follow, include: complex processes and resources of an entire business – even
a small one. It is fundamentally important, then, to build
• Identification of mission-critical systems an “aerial view” of the ebbs and flows of the business, so
• Prioritizing services into risk tolerance tiers that all business processes can be identified, evaluated, and
• Conducting a systematic risk assessment ranked according to their perceived levels of criticality to
• Identifying points of failure business operations.
• Assessing the pros and cons of dependency on a single
business continuity provider Once the processes have been identified, then the underly-
• Determining the steps involved in selecting a provider ing systems can be identified as well. This process must
include a comprehensive hardware inventory across all data
idenTiFiCaTiOn OF MiSSiOn-CriTiCal SySTeMS centers, office environments, call centers, operations centers,
and any other locations where a significant amount of
Mission-critical systems are those resources – hardware, human-to-machine (and therefore system) interaction takes
software, operational processes, operating procedures – that place. At the same time, an application inventory should be
are absolutely necessary for the business to operate. Funda- conducted to identify all of the ways that people rely on the
mentally speaking, if these resources become unavailable or hardware to do their jobs. Keep in mind that the hardware
severely impaired for any reason and for any length of time, is nothing more than a very large heat engine and real estate
business operations are jeopardized. It is critical, therefore, consumer without applications running on it; all data flows
to identify these systems and take steps to ensure that they and all application-to-application flow-through should be
are appropriately protected. identified at the same time as part of a comprehensive sys-
tematic analysis of critical IT resources.
The first step in the process, therefore, is to identify these
systems. In reality, though, this is not the first step – it is
PriOriTizing ServiCeS
the third step. The first step is to map out the day-to-day inTO riSk TOleranCe TierS
operations of the business to ensure a clear understanding of
exactly how the business operates. This means taking inven- Once the mission-critical systems have been identified,
tory of business processes, and then relating those business including all hardware, software, processes and procedures,
processes to the critical systems that underlie them. Sounds the next step in the business continuity planning process
silly? Take this simple test: If you were to lose your laptop is to rank them according to their relative importance to
tomorrow, what would the actual impact on you be? Let’s the business. This is an extraordinarily difficult part of the
assume that your data is backed up (a major assumption). overall process for one simple reason: it tends to become
Do you have a list of the applications that reside on the lap- emotionally charged as different organizations, if given the
top that you will have to reinstall to restore the machine to chance, argue for the relative importance of their critical
full functionality? You probably have the CDs and DVDs systems. For this reason alone, it is important that the rank-
of the applications you’ve purchased in a box somewhere, ing of these processes be conducted by a team made up of
but what about the installers for the applications you’ve representatives from two organizations: IT and corporate
purchased online? And once they’re installed, how long will finance. IT must be involved because they understand the
it take you to download all of the updates required to bring inner workings of the systems and can speak to the complex
the applications up-to-date? And what about all of the interworking that often exists between seemingly unre-
serial numbers and product keys required to securely install lated applications and hardware. Finance must be involved
the software? If you have to change operating systems because in the final analysis, the ultimate “tie-breaker” is
because of an update that came out since you bought the the degree to which one mission-critical process affects the
laptop, how long will it take you to be comfortable with it ability of the corporation to generate revenue, relative to
to ensure functionality? other systems. After all, how do you compare the relative
importance of an order tracking application vs. a strategic
data collection application used by marketing? Remember,
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we’re not talking about which one lives and which one dies: elements of the Plan
We’re talking about a hierarchy of recovery to ensure that
the applications most necessary for revenue protection and The plan, once completed, typically has five elements:
cost control are brought back to life first. As long as this is
1. An analysis of the business, as described earlier;
understood by all concerned, the emotional challenges tend
2. A description of the various solution elements that
to fade in favor of more rational arguments.
have been put into place to deal with the potential for
a significant disruption of business operations;
COnduCTing a SySTeMaTiC riSk aSSeSSMenT
3. A plan for the actual implementation of the identified
The “tiering” process is usually performed according to a procedures, should they be needed;
set of standardized measures by which priorities can be 4. A process for routinely testing the procedures to
assigned. These measures, the Recover Point Objective ensure their functionality and currency; and finally,
(RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO), are used to 5. A maintenance program to ensure that the plan is con-
determine the relative value of systems and applications stantly updated according to changes in the business.
based on their importance to the business and based on a
One of the main reasons that business continuity plans fail
set of agreed-upon performance objectives. The Recovery
is that they are not routinely updated to model the chang-
Point Objective is the specific point in time to which you
ing profile of the business, leaving some critical systems,
must recover data in order to resume effective business
processes or infrastructure inadequately protected.
operations. It does not imply 100% recovery of all data. The
RPO is generally considered to be a measure of acceptable There’s an old saying in business: “That which gets measured
data loss following a major disruptive event. RPO is serious gets managed.” RPOs and RTOs are two of the important
business: If your RPO is determined to be four hours but a success metrics of a business continuity plan. Once they are
full recovery will take seven, the last three hours are deemed understood, put into place and socialized throughout the
to fall into the category of acceptable loss and business business, they must be mapped to the systems and critical
operations will be resumed from the four-hour recovery infrastructure that they are designed to protect. The next
point, with attempts to manually recover the lost activity step in the process is to indentify failure points.
carried out later, as time permits. In the IT world, RPO is
the technical equivalent of medical triage – the steps neces- idenTiFying POinTS OF Failure
sary to stabilize the patient.
Every complex system has its weak links, and part of the
Closely related to RPO is Recovery Time Objective (RTO). business continuity planning process is to identify them
RTO is the amount of time within which a critical business so that they can either be fixed or appropriately protected.
process must be restored following a systemic disruption to Creating a map of critical process dependencies (described
avoid unacceptable consequences in terms of the ability to earlier) and then establishing metrics (RPOs and RTOs)
satisfy customer needs and meet critical business objectives. represents phase one of this process; phase two is the exami-
Bear in mind that the RTO is associated with the recovery nation procedure designed to identify areas where attention
of critical business processes, not with the recovery of the is required. Areas that tend to be at risk, and that should be
underlying systems: that’s the domain of the RPO. Busi- carefully examined, include:
nesses must address both if they are to develop a holistic
plan for assured operational continuity. When a company’s • Power feeds to critical buildings: Is the power coming
Web site is the victim of a denial-of-service attack, and the into critical buildings (call centers, data centers, opera-
company relies on their Web site for revenue generation, the tions centers) fed redundantly and from different points
recover priority (RTO) is much higher than it would be for on the grid? Is there uninterruptible power (UPS) in
a company whose Web site is used as nothing more than an place? Is it tested routinely, and under load?
“online business card.”
• High-bandwidth connections to critical buildings: Are
the circuits redundant? Is that redundancy accom-
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plished over facilities that are physically separated from that a primary application server should die, is there a
one another? Is there a high-speed wireless connection backup system in place and online to ensure that busi-
that could be used in the event of an event that dis- ness can continue as required?
rupts the physical media?
• System security: Are there procedures in place for
• Database hardware (disks, servers): Are the servers, auditing security policies and practices? These proce-
processors and disk arrays that host and make available dures should include examination of physical security
critical applications configured in such a way that they that protects buildings, outside plant, and personnel, as
have “hot spares” available should they be needed? well as logical security practices that protect software
In the event of a major failure of the physical site, is and data from worms, viruses, Trojan horses, denial-of-
there access to a redundant site to ensure business service attacks, malware, spam, social engineering, and
continuity? Is the actual access redundant, i.e., is there other intentionally disruptive attacks.
(for example) point-to-point wireless available to
ensure connectivity in the event of a disruption of the This is by no means intended to be a complete list, but it
physical plant? does represent a valid sample of the key issues that should
be included in the development of a business continuity
• Backup processes: Is there a clearly-documented protection strategy. It can also serve as the basis for identi-
backup strategy that ensures that all critical applica- fying weak points in the strategy: If questions arise as the
tions (and the data they create) are archived on a result of the process described above, there are weaknesses
regularly-occurring schedule? Are multiple copies in the overall plan that should be examined and rectified.
created, and if so, are they stored in physically differ-
ent locations? Is there a process in place to gain access aSSeSSing The PrOS and COnS
to backup copies in the event of a business disruption? OF a BuSineSS COnTinuiTy ParTner
For many corporations, backup practices rise to levels
that appear to be one step removed from organiza- Once the metrics have been decided upon, are accepted,
tional paranoia. The need to backup customer data and and have been logically linked to the critical elements of
the applications that depend on that data cannot be the corporate information infrastructure, a priority-based
overstated, however. Some of the methodologies that strategy for resource recovery can be created, based on the
companies consider include: steps described earlier. In large corporations it has been a
standard practice to perform most recovery processes inter-
• Tape backups that are transported to offsite facilities nally, using the knowledge resources of the IT or Informa-
on a daily basis tion Systems organization. Increasingly, however, companies
are relying on outsourced business continuity providers to
• Disk backups that are performed locally but copied handle this aspect of protecting the business. The primary
to a remote backup facility reasons for this are two-fold: expertise, and strategic diver-
sity. Business continuity organizations have considerable
• Real-time data replication to an offsite archive
expertise in their field and are therefore valuable partners.
• Support for remote workers: In the event that a signifi- And because they offer service diversity in terms of diverse
cant number of remote workers would be affected by a network routing, distributed database backup and hardware
catastrophic system failure, are there alternatives avail- redundancy, their role as a value-added provider is a valid
able that they can use to gain access to backup critical one.
systems? Is there adequate security in place to ensure
that remote access to sensitive information assets can SeleCTing a vendOr ParTner
be granted without threatening those assets?
The vendor selection criteria must be carefully crafted to
• Application availability: Are critical applications avail- not only ensure that the vendor’s product is up to the task
able from multiple servers? In other words, in the event of addressing the needs of the business, but that the vendor
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is in a position to provide ongoing, long-term support. This back” in project discussions to raise concerns about poten-
is an important and often misunderstood part of the vendor tial issues? Do they ask as many questions as they attempt
selection process, and companies have been known to select to answer? Have they created and offered a technique for
a vendor based solely on the viability of their technology assessing the overall effectiveness of the implementation and
when in fact the technology is perhaps the least important distinct, well-defined intervals? Similarly, to what degree
of all criteria. Some companies, for example, have a policy has the vendor identified management concerns?
that dictates that if their company’s purchases represent
more than 20% of a vendor’s annual revenues, they won’t #3: Financial viability
buy from that vendor. It doesn’t seem to make logical sense
until you think about the decision strategically: If your Mentioned earlier, this particular criterion is of utmost
company represents 20% of that company’s revenues and importance, particularly in business continuity implemen-
you have a bad year and cut spending, you could put the tations that are deemed “mission-critical.” If the vendor
vendor in financial jeopardy, which would make it impos- does not strike you as being viable, don’t consider them
sible for them to provide the level of support you require. in the final running. Keep in mind that the implementa-
It is important therefore to consider vendor selection from tion of a complex system does not end the day it is turned
multiple, seemingly unrelated points-of-view. up: in essence, it never ends and requires various levels of
vendor support throughout its life cycle. Critical questions
Vendors are typically evaluated in four key areas: (1) breadth to ask, then, should revolve around the vendor’s business
and richness of services; (2) overall solution functionality; model, survivability, cash position, vision, and commitment
(3) financial viability; and (4) overall cost. to product longevity. For example, to what degree is the
vendor committed to building products around open stan-
#1: Breadth and richness of Services dards? What does the vendor’s future vision look like for
themselves and their products? Can they tell a compelling
Services are represented not only by the capabilities of the and logical story about where they see themselves in three-
vendor’s solution but also by the added value that the vendor to-five years? What customer testimonials will the vendor
overlays on top of and after the sale. For example, a multi- make available to you? Who are their customers, and what
stage, hosted backup and archival solution is a complex sale sector do they hail from? Are they exclusively in one sector
and an even more complex implementation. Is your expecta- or another, or do they span a broad range and therefore
tion that the vendor will work in lockstep with you before, have the ability to draw from a broad experience base? Do
during and after the implementation? Will they rely entirely they work with channels, and if so, what’s the nature of the
on their own resources for implementation or will they also relationship? How long have they been in business? What is
rely on contracted capability? What are the qualifications their cash position?
of the people who will be your primary implementation
resources? What kind of post sales support will you receive? #4: Cost
Will there be resources on site for a period of time follow-
ing project completion or will you be dependent on remote Overall cost is a measure of flexibility and operational
resources that must be dispatched if they are needed? effectiveness, and the manner in which the vendor presents
their solution is a measure of how well they understand your
#2: Solution Functionality “pain points” and business drivers. For example, does the
vendor go to significant lengths to understand your current
Related to these basic questions are questions around the situation and take whatever steps are available to protect
offered product, service or solution. How well does the ven- any pre-existing investments that you would like to protect?
dor understand your business, where you are, and where you Does the vendor offer a variety of solutions or packages that
want to go? How broad are the considerations it addresses provide “silver, gold and platinum” options if you request
– does the proposal go beyond pure technology to include them? Does the vendor offer anything in the way of model-
economic, human capital, end user, application and com- ing tools that will help you make a buy decision?
petitive concerns? How effectively does the vendor “push
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Project assessment of your systems – only the ones that provide services that
matter. And since most businesses only run systems that
When filling out the paperwork for a work-related accident, matter, those that they do run typically provide services to
regardless of how minor, one of the last questions asked on employees or customers that are deemed mission-critical. If
the form is “How could this accident have been prevented?” they fail to operate, the business fails to operate, often with
If a business continuity solution is to be put into place and it disastrous results.
is to deliver on its promises of cost reduction, efficiency and
enhanced workplace effectiveness, project managers must We began this paper talking about the variety of events,
create an assessment methodology that monitors project some predictable, some not, some accidental, some not, that
progress, compares it to expectations, and performs quali- can cause a serious disruption of your organization’s ability
tative analysis of the results relative to those expectations. to get the job done. Natural disasters, such as flood, fire,
There is no such thing as a perfect, problem-free project, earthquakes, hurricanes, mudslides, disease, and lightning
but there is such a thing as a well-managed project that strikes cannot, for the most part, be prevented; they can
experiences minimal problems – typically because of a well- only be recovered from, the degree to which an organization
designed assessment and intervention process. prepares for their occurrence is a measure of the degree to
which the impact of these events can be minimized.
Elements of such a process should include, at a minimum,
cost, identified benchmarks, a clear list of anticipated Other events, such as failures due to human error, labor
(desirable) outcomes, solid, extensive project documentation, strikes, intentional sabotage, burglary, theft, IT-related
well-crafted flowcharts that identify the interactivity among faults stemming from physical failures, viruses, Trojan
all logical and physical elements of the project, and a well- horses, worms, and denial-of-service attacks, can largely be
designed training program to ensure that personnel respon- prevented through the deployment of carefully thought-out,
sible for operating, maintaining and using the new system prudently designed business continuity practices.
can do so with maximum levels of capability. There should
also be an audit process in place to track those things that Preparation of these practices involves a logical set of steps
went well, those things that didn’t and discussions about that include identifying mission-critical systems; conduct-
alternative paths that could/should have been taken. ing a series of granular and highly-detailed risk assessments;
creating “strata” of risk tolerance for business systems;
There is nothing wrong with reliance on a single vendor for locating single points of failure; selecting partners for busi-
business continuity services, as long as the selected vendor ness continuity resources; and finally, identifying the steps
satisfies the concerns listed in the prior section. If they do, required to ensure effective business process continuity and
then they are behaving more as a business partner than data recovery. These steps lead collectively to a metrics-
they are a vendor, and they take their relationship with you driven business continuity strategy that provides guidance
seriously – your success is their success – but just as impor- for the protection of both logical and physical resources in
tant, your failure is theirs, as well. A professional services the corporation. That strategy is then shared throughout the
provider in this space understands the business criticality of organization to ensure that all employees understand its role,
the services they deliver, and will do everything they can to its importance and their responsibilities relative to protect-
make the customer comfortable with the degree to which ing critical organizational assets.
they take that relationship seriously.
The final section of the paper dealt with the process of
selecting a business continuity service provider suited to the
Summary of recommendations task of implementing the continuity strategy. Assessing and
selecting a vendor-partner should be based on a number of
Dentists often have a poster in their examining rooms that factors, and while cost is certainly a consideration, other
says, “You don’t have to floss all of your teeth – only those factors are equally important – if not more so. They include
that you want to keep.” That same message applies to the the depth and scope of their offered services, the financial
world of business continuity. You don’t have to protect all viability of the company, the degree to which they truly
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understand the nature of your situation, the appropriate- Related to hardware availability is application availability.
ness of their solution for you, and a number of other factors. XO offers a number of services that address this critical
Don’t rush through the process – take your time, assess well, need. They include Applications Performance Management,
and select based on these factors. You’ll thank yourself later. Collocation, Hosted Exchange Services, and Web Hosting.
XO COMMuniCaTiOnS aS a To address the very real requirements of backup solutions,
BuSineSS COnTinuiTy ParTner XO’s Managed Backup program ensures that enterprise data
is safely archived in multiple locations to guarantee surviv-
XO Communications is one of many companies helping its ability in the event of a disruption of business operations.
customers with business continuity solutions. The company
stands out in the crowd for one reason: they understand the XO offers Voice Re-Routing and Redundancy Services as
meaning of the word solution. well as a collection of Teleworking solutions that ensure
functionality for remote workers who could otherwise be
Like all service providers, XO has been in the telecom isolated during a disruption of normal business operations.
business for a long time, and offers a complete array of
telecommunications services designed to handle the access Finally, XO has developed a number of services that address
and transport requirements of the most demanding the important demands for system security. These include
customer applications. our MPLS IP-VPN solution, which guarantees the avail-
ability of a completely secure, high-bandwidth connection
Rather than create technology and then search out applica- that is extremely flexible and cost-effective; a Managed
tions for it – typical of many players in the industry – XO Security solution, which take care of system and network
studies the market, develops an understanding of your security as an outsourced service; and Perimeter Email
business needs in terms of critical information infrastruc- Protection, which dramatically reduces spam and improves
ture – and then crafts solutions around those needs network efficiency.
based on the best technology available. We stand behind
our solutions because we use them internally to protect our
own business resources. Conclusion
XO’s portfolio of business continuity solutions addresses the Sad to say, disruptive events do happen – and in most cases,
spectrum of enterprise demands. To ensure high-bandwidth they are a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if’ question. Businesses
connections to critical buildings, XO’s Broadband Wireless that assume something will occur that will disrupt their
solution delivers on the promise of network resiliency. Dedi- ability to do business, and then plan for that eventuality
cated Internet Access guarantees network path redundancy before it happens, will be well ahead of the curve in terms
and the ability to re-route around network trouble spots of their ability to survive the event and continue to service
on-demand. High-Bandwidth Network Transport ensures customers. Developing a well-planned business continuity
the availability of adequate network bandwidth for the most plan should be a matter of highest priority for all businesses,
demanding applications. regardless of size, structure or function. Remember, chance
favors the prepared business: Plan now, and breathe easy
To ensure peace-of-mind relative to the survivability and later. You won’t regret it.
availability of database hardware (disks and servers) that
might be affected following a disruptive event, XO’s Man-
aged Server solution, in concert with our Collocation offer-
ing, guarantees access to redundant hardware to support
critical operational processes.
Copyright 2009. XO Communications, llC. all rights reserved.
XO, the XO design logo, and all related marks are registered trademarks of XO Communications, llC. 11
12. Copyright 2009. XO Communications, llC. all rights reserved.
XO, the XO design logo, and all related marks are registered trademarks of XO Communications, llC.