Tackling Business Disruptions With Effective BCP Solutions

Unplanned business disruptions come in many forms and sizes resulting in tremendous losses.  With enterprises becoming increasingly reliant on technology to conduct their business, BCP has gained all the more importance. As it is usually too late to implement a BCP solution when a disruptive event occurs, there is always a loss of productivity and revenue. The ability of an organization to recover from a disaster is directly related to the degree of BCP [Business Continuity Planning] that has taken place before the disaster. Business Continuity Plan solutions are critical to the transparent and continuous operation of all types of businesses.

Business Continuity Planning is a proactive planning process that ensures critical services or products are delivered during a disruption, and it must include plans, measures and arrangements to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services and products, which permits the organization to recover its facility, data and assets. By implementing a Business Continuity Plan your business will increase its recovery capabilities dramatically. And that means you can make the right decisions quickly, cut downtime and minimize financial losses.  Addressing the business continuity needs of office workers is important. These employees work at their desks, and when they work outside of the office they are usually without remote access to corporate resources.

While data protection and disaster recovery are key components of business continuity, business continuity must incorporate a full array of critical functions to keep your literal and virtual doors open for business. With a good BCP, there is no disruption of business in the event of an emergency, for both SSL VPN users and remote desktop access as well. As there are significant “hidden” losses caused by these mundane disruptions, it is important to have an effective solution in place.

Creating and maintaining a BCP helps ensure that an institution has the resources and information that needed to deal with any emergencies. Effective business continuity planning solutions are reliant on both the competence and appropriate levels of expertise from within the organization. There is also an improvement in overall organizational efficiency and in the identifying the relationship of assets and human and financial resources to critical services and deliverables.

No matter what type of remote access solution you choose, it is a superior business tool used to increase productivity by enabling easy file access during commutes, travel, after-hours work, business meetings and more. The flexibility of remote access allows for a mobile workplace has made it an essential part of business continuity.

A properly funded, well-prioritized BCP solution combined with a regular program of testing and disaster recovery drills, can help to safeguard an organization.

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Managing Risks with Business Continuity Planning

Every business enterprise is created with the sole aim of gaining profits from the business. However, this legal entity is a risky affair and is prone to disruptions. Business disruptions can come in from various sources including natural ones. In the technology driven world today with radical environmental changes, the risk to the continuity of business is even more. The unplanned events may leave lasting impressions on both small and medium enterprises as well as global organizations. The brave heart entrepreneur and business enterprise thus needs to be always prepared to face the disruptions and keeps options ready to ensure business continuity come what may.

Today, as part of   smart business operations, enterprises opt to have in place strategies for business continuity as part of operations management.  The business continuity planning (BCP) is meant to identify an organization's exposure to internal and external threats and prepare the assets to provide effective prevention and recovery mechanism for the organization, while maintaining a competitive advantage. Wikipedia defines the business continuity plan as a road map for continuing operations under adverse conditions irrespective of this being natural or man-made.

For enterprise that are totally technology dependent any small system errors and bug in the complex programs can bring their entire business to a standstill.  Thus the business continuity strategy works to provide a framework for resilience building and tends to protect the interest of key stakeholders. Traditionally what the business continuity plans looked at is methods to protect the business in face of physical damages to equipment, products and disruption of services. However, with the globalized business world so driven by technology, even the absence of the key staff can cause equivalent effects on the business.

Today the business continuity planning strategies should be one that would help global enterprises face emergency situations without loss of productivity and profit. The technological innovations have paved way for new age enterprises to provide remote desktop  access to their distantly located employees and key personnel. Such remote access solution is best if it can facilitate enterprises with:
 

• Anytime, anywhere access for employees to familiar workstation  and business critical resources

• Real-time and secure access gateways to the corporate network and critical data  for the partners and vendors

• Performance consistency for the entire workforce

• Automated VPN provisioning

• Cost-effectiveness and global redundancy

Enterprises make use of remote access and BYOD solutions to increases the mobility of the workforce and ensure business continuity. But along with the increased mobility they also need to cater for cost-efficient performance of the corporate network infrastructure. Load balancers play a major role in disseminating process requests of the workforce across the wide networks irrespective of the device and location.  The modern day innovative load balancers help enterprises to leverage on the multi-core processing and ensure a scalable business continuity planning through cost-efficient performance. 

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Tablet Access

Business Continuity Planning -Safety In face of Adversities

Every business irrespective of being a small and medium one or a large conglomerate is a profit oriented one. Technological innovations deployed in the business environment aids in globalized expansion of the business and leads to revenue generation and increased profits. However, any disruptions either minor or major may have serious impact on the day-to-day business operations.

Foreseeing business disruptions or the time when disaster strikes in an unknown factor and the globally bound organizations today are faced by the challenge of maintaining business continuity in face of all storm. Business continuity planning is one of the main strategies taken up by the global organization. Spread across geographical boundaries and remotely distant locations, these organizations need to be ready to face any disruptions in the business operations while ensuring that work goes on without any serious impact.

Business disruptions may result from various reasons such as epidemics, transit strikes, cyber-attacks, natural calamities etc. Under such circumstances a detailed remote access strategy and business continuity planning (BCP) will help the global enterprises to deal with emergency situations and help them to avoid loss of productivity or revenue. The remote access solution must be one that would help enterprises with:

* Secure anytime, anywhere access leading to uninterrupted business continuity
* Maximum performance, automated VPN provisioning
* Cost-effectiveness and global redundancy

A continuous delivery of critical services and products, demands that organizations need to have the facility that permits them to recover data, application and assets in a real-time access mode. As Gartner's analyst suggests that the most critical success factor to any business continuity plan is fast re-establishment of business processes. However, if the disaster recovery plans do not include Remote Desktop Access, no amount of technology can save business operations. Hence the real-time access to information will facilitate the employees to continue work from any location, allow business partners and suppliers an uninterrupted access to important information. Such actions will minimize the disruption levels of business processes and applications.

With large number of vendors offering business continuity planning solutions, enterprises need to make the most of the benefits to ensure productivity at all times. The enterprises needs to decide on appropriate ones and service types required for the business environment. The availability of applications from the corporate network and remote desktop access will help mitigate business disruptions. Application availability solutions from leading service provider’s offer load balancers and WAN optimization controllers for any fail-over for WAN links, devices and data centers.

However, the enterprises need to ensure that anytime anywhere remote access to business critical information also poses issues of data and network security. Thus service providers of business continuity planning solutions also need to ensure that the corporate network are equipped with secure access gateways that can support multiple access.


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Load Balancers And Their Role in Global Environment

A technological innovation over the period has facilitated the business enterprises with digital workspaces. The corporate offices work through highly networked environment and use large number of software applications for the day-to-day operational requirements. Further with globalization, these enterprises have also expanded globally with distantly located regions. However, real-time connectivity between all the far-off offices and remotely working project teams are maintained with the help of dedicated servers.

The technological enhancements further made it possible for the offshore teams, outsourced vendors and remote workforce to access the corporate network irrespective of the distance and device. Such anytime anywhere access to the various applications, files and folders from the office workstation and business critical data and information taxes the servers and the network when loaded with increasing demands. Added to this the BYOD apps available only increases the load on the servers and clogging of the network leading to reduced speed and performance. Under such circumstances, load balancers help the enterprises in easing out the situations.

Load balancers are generally used in heavy traffic laden computer networks like the Internet and corporate networks of multinational companies. Defined as a computer networking methodology load balancing helps to distribute the workload across multiple resources to achieve optimal utilization with maximum throughput, and minimum response time. , and avoid overload. Dedicated hardware, software and servers carry on these functions. The software program helps to track the front-end client’s access services and forwards requests to the back-end servers to enhance website performance as well as reduce the burden of a particular server.  

Further with most of the global enterprises having distantly located project teams working either in offshore locations or forms a part of the mobile workforce, providing them with remote desktop access and to the corporate data becomes very important. Networks of large corporate houses or small and medium enterprises or data centers with vast amount of data and application storage and transfer resort to use of load balancers.

For the new age enterprises load balancers  offers essential benefits such as:

●  Minimized load on individual systems with reduced response time
●  Maximum network utilization
●  It enhances reliability and improves user satisfaction.

However, with issues relating to web securities, the load balancers intelligently routes the hypertext transfer protocol traffic to servers which are involved in controlling access to websites. Besides these also scan the traffic for any spyware, phishing attacks and malicious components entering the network thus ensuring an efficient system of business continuity planning. 

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Unplanned PTOs- Ensure Business Continuity with Remote Access Solutions

When most enterprises talk about business disruptions, they equate it to major-scale events or catastrophic disasters such as H1N1 outbreak, earthquake, volcano, hurricane, power failures, or terrorist attacks. Hence, they engage in a form of business continuity planning (BCP) to protect against interruptions that disrupt continuous business operations. Even IT system crashes, communication failures and supply chain problems are included in the list of business disruptions. However, what these enterprises fail to surmise is that even events considered as minor and mundane can result in losses. Bad traffic, seasonal snowstorms, and even employees taking the occasional unplanned PTO (paid time off) are often categorized as mundane events. However, these mundane disruptions cost businesses money – a fact that even enterprises are not aware of. Let’s look at the impact of a mundane event like unplanned PTO on an enterprise’s bottom line.

PTO or Paid time off is a bank of hours that an employee uses at his/her discretion. Employees take unplanned PTOs in order to take care of an issue at home such as a sick child or waiting for a delivery or contractor. Here employees take PTOs to deal with some personal issues. However, there are situations where employees are forced to take PTOs for no personal reasons. Take for instance, seasonal snowstorms, bad traffic, transit strikes and so on where employees have no option but to be away from the office and work. These are events that can (and do) happen on any given day and prevent employees from getting to the office.

Unlike planned PTOs informed in advance and accounted for in the budget, unplanned PTOs affect an enterprise badly. These unplanned PTOs result in losses, which are greater than most would imagine. This is because employees take PTO without prior notice and therefore it may not be possible to adequately back fill their role. This results in neglected tasks and delayed critical business processes. Hence, what enterprises must do is not only develop business plans for critical as well as minor events but also deploy RDP remote desktop access solutions to ensure business continuity. Such a move would help save revenue by allowing employees to get to work, even when they cannot get to the office.

In the absence of remote desktop access solutions, the so-called ‘mundane’ events are not so mundane at all.

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Business continuity through remote desktop access solutions

Our modern day business world is evolving and is becoming much more advanced and globalized, with multiple teams working across various time zones. As a result of which, the traditional 9am to 5pm job set up is becoming or rather has become obsolete. That is not all. The customary meeting taking place in boardrooms or conference room too are being replaced by online collaborations and conversations that today is an easy task with the help of remote access solutions and SSL VPN tools. Remote access through VPN solutions helps business persons to manage their business anytime from anywhere.

Business continuity is an essential element of every corporate set up. As business continuity planning today is a crucial aspect of every business, it is imperative that companies invest in enterprise class remote desktop solutions that assist in leveraging technologies that are secure and scalable. Compliance too is an important factor as to why government agencies mandate sensible BCP Government mandates. Also the regulatory compliance needs several organizations to have auditable, secure admission to critical data even when there are unforeseen events taking place.

Unplanned PTO is one of the many kinds of business hindrances. There are a few employees who opt in for PTO when there is no other choice to be away from the office and yet continue their work. The other reason that can be listed that, employees are required to handle some household issues as well. Hence, an employer might as well consider that opting in for a PTO day is the best possible solution to keep the work on. On the other hand, unplanned PTO might also impact on a company’s bottom line.

Therefore, when employees take an unplanned PTO it practically might not be possible to cover up an entire day’s work responsibilities. The outcome could be in the form of accumulated tasks that are neglected for an entire day and might also delay in critical business processes. Planned PTO is accountable for the budget, whereas unplanned PTO impacts the company revenues. It is estimated based on the yearly productivity, total employee count and the average count of the PTO’s taken by each employee per year.

Today leading solution providers have come up with business continuity through remote desktop access solutions. Regardless of the type of solution that you might choose, you need to ensure that it results in increasing the overall productivity and helps in file access. Advanced remote desktop solutions help to resolve business bottlenecks and helps in business continuity planning with its secure remote access to office desktops and computing devices. It provides a secure and simple access to the desktop platform and has a simple-to-use architecture. The solution is perfect for workers who need to attend their personal and professional tasks without neglecting either of them.

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Business Continuity Planning to Avoid Disruptions and Interruptions

Every enterprise face a number of disasters that ranges from minor to catastrophic. These disasters can cost enterprises money since disruptions and interruptions lead to lost revenues and additional expenses, which finally results in reduced profits.

Every enterprise face a number of disasters that ranges from minor to catastrophic. These disasters can cost enterprises money since disruptions and interruptions lead to lost revenues and additional expenses, which finally results in reduced profits. Besides that, enterprises have to face customer defections as well as loss of reputation and goodwill. This makes it necessary for the implementation of a business continuity plan that is effective enough to cover the occurrence of events such as equipment failure, application failure or corruption of database, malicious software attack, hacking or other internet attacks, social unrest or terrorist attacks, disruption of power supply or telecommunication, natural disasters, fire, and human error, sabotage or strike.

Wikipedia defines Business Continuity Planning (BCP) as a strategy that "identifies an organization's exposure to internal and external threats and synthesizes hard and soft assets to provide effective prevention and recovery for the organization, while maintaining competitive advantage and value system integrity". Simply put, BCP is a collection of documents, procedures and instructions that help businesses to respond proactively to accidents, disasters, and emergencies so that business operations do not face any disruptions or interruptions.

The BCP process comprises of 6 key stages namely

* Project Initiation

In this phase, business continuity objective and policies are defined and drawn up.

* Business Analysis

In this phase, risk analysis and business impact analysis are performed. Then different business continuity strategies are identified and after performing cost-benefit analysis, the best strategy is selected. The budget for the BCP is also developed in this phase.

* Design and Development of the Business Plan

This phase involves the development of backup and recovery strategies, scenarios to execute plan, and escalation, notification and plan activation criteria.

* Implementation or Creating the plan

This phase involves the preparation of Emergency Response Procedures, Command Center Activation Procedures, Detailed Recovery Procedures, Vendors Contracts and Purchase of Recovery Resources and so on.

* Testing

This phase involves the exercise of program, objectives, plans, scenarios and actual exercise plan. In this phase, training and corporate awareness are also taken care of.

* Maintenance or Updating the plan

This phase involves the review and updating of the business plan.

BCP is essential in today's scenario where the business environment is hyper competitive and volatile. BCP is easy now as enterprises have the support of business continuity solutions that offers availability and remote access solutions. This helps enterprises to not only have its core business systems up and running but also ensure that its employees always have access to the core systems.

Other Links

Application Availability

WAN Optimization Controller

Business Continuity Planning to Avoid Disruptions and Interruptions

Every enterprise face a number of disasters that ranges from minor to catastrophic. These disasters can cost enterprises money since disruptions and interruptions lead to lost revenues and additional expenses, which finally results in reduced profits. Besides that, enterprises have to face customer defections as well as loss of reputation and goodwill. This makes it necessary for the implementation of a business continuity plan that is effective enough to cover the occurrence of events such as equipment failure, application failure or corruption of database, malicious software attack, hacking or other internet attacks, social unrest or terrorist attacks, disruption of power supply or telecommunication, natural disasters, fire, and human error, sabotage or strike.

Wikipedia defines Business Continuity Planning (BCP) as a strategy that “identifies an organization's exposure to internal and external threats and synthesizes hard and soft assets to provide effective prevention and recovery for the organization, while maintaining competitive advantage and value system integrity”. Simply put, BCP is a collection of documents, procedures and instructions that help businesses to respond proactively to accidents, disasters, and emergencies so that business operations do not face any disruptions or interruptions.

The BCP process comprises of 6 key stages namely

* Project Initiation

In this phase, business continuity objective and policies are defined and drawn up.

* Business Analysis

In this phase, risk analysis and business impact analysis are performed. Then different business continuity strategies are identified and after performing cost-benefit analysis, the best strategy is selected. The budget for the BCP is also developed in this phase.

* Design and Development of the Business Plan

This phase involves the development of backup and recovery strategies, scenarios to execute plan, and escalation, notification and plan activation criteria.

* Implementation or Creating the plan

This phase involves the preparation of Emergency Response Procedures, Command Center Activation Procedures, Detailed Recovery Procedures, Vendors Contracts and Purchase of Recovery Resources and so on.

* Testing

This phase involves the exercise of program, objectives, plans, scenarios and actual exercise plan. In this phase, training and corporate awareness are also taken care of.

* Maintenance or Updating the plan

This phase involves the review and updating of the business plan.

BCP is essential in today’s scenario where the business environment is hyper competitive and volatile. BCP is easy now as enterprises have the support of business continuity solutions that offers availability and remote access solutions. This helps enterprises to not only have its core business systems up and running but also ensure that its employees always have access to the core systems.

Other Links

RDP