Disaster Recovery – A Four Letter Word Spelled PLAN

25 Mar Disaster Recovery – A Four Letter Word Spelled PLAN

Disasters happen. Even when you can see them coming, like the recent deadly tornadoes in Iowa this month, sometimes disasters can’t be avoided or prevented—and may have worse impacts than you imagined. Every business needs a plan to protect it from serious incidents that can hinder normal business activities. A comprehensive recovery plan ensures continuity of business operations during a chaotic situation. At DATAMATX, we have one.

Our internal plan covers many kinds of disruptions that might affect our three facilities located in Atlanta, Phoenix and Richmond, VA. It provides for computer operations, print/mail production equipment and key people.

Here are some highlights of our business continuity plan:

• Both our Atlanta and Richmond facilities can share in distributive processing and each currently serves as the disaster recovery site for the other. Both sites maintain identical capabilities. Two redundant sites guarantee your critical documents, invoices and statements will be mailed on schedule, ensuring an uninterrupted cash flow for your business.

• Communications are maintained through multiple internet connections, using diverse carriers and fiber routes. Both facilities have identical FTP server configurations and routinely synchronize user-account databases. Behind the scenes, we are able to receive and process your files at either site

• All our facilities are configured with compatible print production equipment to ensure continuity. Printer resources are automatically updated at all three sites, enabling us to process and distribute your documents to any of our processing facilities without interruption.

• Our processing workflow and TRAX production system is standardized across all our work sites. All facilities are equipped with compatible mail processing equipment.

• To ensure cross-facility data restoration in the event of a disaster, we coordinate our backup software, hardware, and media types. Both the Atlanta and Richmond facilities perform uniform and complete system backups; tapes and archives are maintained in an access-controlled facility. We can recreate our entire data center from either set of backups. This ensures we are able to print and deliver your documents to the USPS without interruption.

In a stressful disaster situation, critical decision-making takes on an even higher importance, while also becoming more difficult. A solid disaster recovery plan that identifies the key personnel and assets to deploy, with the ability to quickly recover, is indispensable for making fast, but vital decisions under considerable pressure. While it is nearly impossible to be 100 percent prepared for every unforeseen disaster, laying out a plan can assure your organization has the people and the tools in place to not just survive, but to also provide immediate assistance to customers in your service areas. We continually review, test and evaluate our disaster recovery plan. Our preparedness today gives you confidence that when disasters happen, providing uninterrupted service is as important to us as it is to you and your business!