RB Zane Advisory Group, LLC has recently developed and introduced our “Recovery Requirements Definition” (RRD) offering, a unique and cost effective approach enabling our Clients to be able to identify all the key elements required for an effective Business Continuity program. Before specific recovery strategies can be defined for the data center infrastructure and/or end user workarea environments, the Client must first determine how critical each business function is to the organization in the event of a disaster occurrence. Criticality is usually based on the impact to the organization should there be a significant business interruption impacting IT and/or business areas.

Once business needs are prioritized, recovery strategies are then developed to prevent and/or mitigate losses. Having done a level of analysis appropriate for the Client, Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) are identified and become the key to defining the "right" solution to enable the Client to implement a cost effective and proper recovery program. A significant difference in our approach versus more lengthy and costly full Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is that our focus recognizes the specific requirements of each organization/department and scales the project to meet those specific needs.

Depending on the scope we will jointly develop, our fee for determining IT & Business application priorities, developing a recovery strategy, and recommending appropriate solutions with pricing and advantages/disadvantages is approximately $22,000 - $25,000, depending on the number of IT business applications, client locations, and IT technology environment. We will spend a minimum of 6-18 days on site and complete our deliverables over an elapsed time of 7-8 weeks, depending on the Client’s schedules.

Recovery Requirements Definition

In order to properly define the disaster recovery requirements for the Client and establish the right approach for the development of a recovery plan using industry best practices, an initial analysis of current applications and business processes should be developed. To expedite the initial definition stage and properly identify the recovery requirements, RBZane Advisory Group will provide a focused consulting project that will detail the current environment from a recovery requirements perspective and create an initial recovery strategy with identification of critical business and IT operations systems with a definition of their Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO). We will meet with key IT personnel (technical, operations, and applications representatives) to develop an accurate picture of critical applications and required infrastructure (this project would normally not initially engage users). Appropriate recovery tiers will be defined and agreed to for classification of identified applications with application interdependencies accounted for in this analysis. It is not required for us to meet with the users, but we will engage them as appropriate.  

The following deliverables will be provided from the RRD consulting engagement:

• Development of a list of critical applications, both operational and business
• Identification of application dependencies from other applications
• Development of: 
  • Initial Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for applications identified
  • Initial inventory of current IT infrastructure technologies and then a mapping of them to the applications they support
  • Preliminary classification of applications in recovery tiers (RPO and RTO)
  • Initial disaster recovery strategy(s) and associated architecture based on preliminary analysis  of initial data gathered
• Review of current data backup and offsite storage practices as it relates to disaster recovery
• Development of initial cost estimates for recovery elements identified in the strategy

BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY CONSULTING SERVICES

PROJECT ENGAGEMENT PHASE

DISCOVERY PLANNING DETAILED DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION

BC/DR Program Assessment – defines the current recovery capabilities and gaps through a review of current management processes around continuity, recovery, and availability

Business Impact Analysis – creates the appropriate level of detail required by the client to assess the impact to the business in the event of loss of critical services. Provides an analysis of critical processes and IT applications supporting those vital services along with identification of recovery times and prioritization of dependencies on information availability, infrastructure, network and operational requirements

IT Infrastructure Disaster Recovery Strategy Development – using input from the BIA, the available solutions are identified for each tier of recovery requirements and recommendations made to help management determine what level of protection is appropriate for critical IT business processes

Business Continuity Strategy Development – expanding the strategy beyond the IT requirements, the BCSD initiative will develop requirements and solutions to address the critical business process environments outside IT and develop solutions in the event of a business interruption impacting their location

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan Development – creation of plans for IT recovery, individual application recovery, and/or business process recovery

Recovery Plan Development Tools – creation of the appropriate toolset for each client to be used for development and ongoing maintenance of the recovery plans

Data Center and Workplace Risk Assessment –provides identification of the risks posing the greatest threats to data center and workplace assets, operation and business functions, along with recommendations for risk minimization of identified exposures.