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<\/a>Downtime resulting from environment issues<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe biggest environment culprits when it comes to outages and downtime are:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Heating\/AC failure<\/li>\n
- Weather<\/li>\n
- Power failure<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Not all of these factors can be completely eliminated to help improve uptime, however they certainly can be monitored to help greatly reduce their impact if and when they occur.<\/p>\n
Too often businesses think only about their computer network, data backups, and equipment when building a business continuity plan, and don\u2019t consider the above environment factors. Or, focus is placed on creating a disaster recovery plan, rather than a business continuity plan intended to minimize the potential impact of an adverse event. Helping to prevent environment issues from impacting a business can help make sure that plans to work offsite don\u2019t ever have to be put into practice.<\/p>\n
Looking forward to 2017, businesses should look back at 2016 and some of the key events that caused major business disruption. Storms, blizzards, power loss, extreme heat, and unexpected water incidents (burst pipes, flooded basements, etc.) were among the leading causes of business disruption last year that weren\u2019t related to hacking or data loss episodes.<\/p>\n
Planning to avoid business disruption this year<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Some environment issues cannot be avoided. Acts of God are inevitable; the goal with a business continuity plan is to help make sure your business can continue to operate as close to 100% as possible despite those events. Early prevention is often the key difference between minimal impacts and extended downtime events.<\/p>\n
Currently, only 51% of companies and organizations<\/a> have a business continuity plan in place. This leaves 49% of businesses without a comprehensive plan to ensure uptime, and prevent potentially catastrophic revenue losses in the event of downtime.<\/p>\n
If your business has been operating without a plan, now is the time to put one into place. If your company does have one that doesn\u2019t include environment monitoring, make it one of your\u00a0business’s primary\u00a0New Year\u2019s resolutions to add that critical component.<\/p>\n
Many MSPs that currently work with businesses to help them protect their network and safeguard their data can be a big help when it comes to putting together a business continuity plan. Although environment monitoring doesn\u2019t directly tie into computer and software support, MSPs typically help provide environment monitoring in a data center environment; that experience can easily be modified to fit the needs of any size business.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Monitor and protect your assets\u00a0as part of your New Year’s resolutions<\/strong><\/h3>\nAdding environment monitoring to your business continuity plan is often very easy, and can be done at far less of an expense than you might expect. Depending on the size of your organization\u2019s physical space, you may be able to be alerted proactively to any environment changes with just one monitor and a few specific sensors.<\/p>\n
Every business should be monitoring for temperature and humidity, along with flood. Adding in monitoring for smoke detection, room entry, or power loss will help enhance the environment factors you are keeping an eye on, increasing your organization\u2019s uptime.<\/p>\n