Dealing with disaster recovery

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Ten years ago, only major financial companies could be counted on to have a comprehensive strategy in place to ensure the recovery of key business data and the restoration of major systems in the wake of a disaster. But now, with the range of possible disasters on the increase - from flooding to terrorism - and with the sharpening of regulations mandating the need for better data management, the urgency for a sound disaster recovery (DR) policy has spread to many more types of organisation. Here we talk to two senior IT professionals to find what recovery potential means to them.

Richard McGrail, head of IT with investment management firm Baillie Gifford:

Baillie Gifford is one of the UK's leading privately owned investment management firm. Headquartered in Edinburgh, the company does business across the UK, North America, Japan and Europe. With 430 staff and around £25 billion of client funds to manage, it has had a disaster recovery strategy in place since 1994, making it an early adopter, even by the standards of its own market sector.

Data recovery provision has been put in the hands of SunGard, and its Recovery Centre in nearby Livingston.

But responsibility for recovery has by no means been outsourced, nor marginalised within the IT function, says McGrail. "There are a large number of people here with responsibility for disaster recovery, deliberately not simply one," he says. "We take it very seriously, and have regular tests runs to ensure everyone knows what to do."

He says that as an investment company, Baillie Gifford is typical of the sort of organisation that is expected to have a recovery strategy in place. "But I think all organisations have a duty to see to it that they keep going in the event of a disaster - not just financial services ones. It's probably an easier job for us than for, say, a manufacturing company with a huge and elaborate supply chain. In financial services, our supply chain is electronic, not physical, so that makes key data easier to protect."

With nearly 14 years elapsed since the firm decided to protect its livelihood in the event of a disaster, it has moved a long way, says McGrail: "There wasn't that much technology involved back then - some PCs and a few servers," he recalls. "We've now evolved our recovery strategy so that all key systems are now replicated so that we can be sure of being up and running again within four hours of all but the very worst kind of disaster."

He says that there has been no serious disaster in that time, but that there have been situations where world events have affected the business. "Our disaster recovery committee met a few times in the week after 9/11," he says. "It's interesting how the language around disaster recovery has changed in 14 years. Back then we were guarding against things like flood and fire, but now we're talking about bombs and terrorists."

He says this change means that it's not just your own premises that you need consider a disaster happening to. "Our offices are near Edinburgh railway station, and a terror disaster there might well affect us," he says.

And it's not just physical disasters to property that matter, he says. "You've got to consider what would happen if there was a pandemic and some of your staff fell ill," he says. "The rest might not want to come into the office, so you'd need provisions for them to work at home and a command and control centre to manage that. You have to think of it from all different angles."

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