To remain competitive, many businesses are adopting new information technologies and initiatives that depend on power and cooling technology for their reliability and performance. Yet, according to a joint Emerson Network Power/Continuity Insights survey, many business continuity executives may not be prepared for the affect of these technologies on their mission-critical systems. Three-hundred and twenty-one subscribers of Continuity Insights magazine responded to the survey, which addressed business continuity objectives and business-critical power and cooling systems.
The survey revealed the high degree of change occurring in IT today:
42% of respondents are planning to add blade servers.
69% are adding other high-density systems.
49% are adopting Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems.
53% have plans to physically expand the network into new locations.
Thirty-five percent of survey respondents said their current power systems won’t support planned expansions. Nearly 40% said their cooling systems do not have the capacity to support expansion, prompting Earle Weaver, president of Liebert North America to observe, “While IT systems themselves have been effectively integrated into business continuity plans, in some cases, critical infrastructure systems have not, and that can leave an organization vulnerable to disruption.”
Although 49% of the respondents had recovery time objectives for re-establishment of business-critical functions of two hours or less, and 38% had recovery point objectives of two hours or less for lost work, many are not factoring power and cooling for their mission-critical systems into their plans for restoring operation. Only 44% had calculated the amount of time their computer systems can operate without cooling in the event of an outage, while nearly a third lacked redundancy in their power distribution or back-up power systems. In addition, more than 70% had not quantified their cost of downtime. For those who did know, the potential loss per hour ranged from $1,500 to $800,000.
For complete survey results, e-mail cisurvey@liebert.com.
