Star unveils business continuity plan to keep your business online at Business Continuity Expo 2008
GLOUCESTER, March 2008: Being offline for as little as FIVE hours could bring a business to its knees – that’s the message from Star, the business ISP at next week’s Business Continuity Expo (2-3rd April, Excel, London). A recent survey of small and medium-sized business (SMB) leaders, conducted by Loudhouse Research for Star, shows that the Internet now plays such a significant role in business communications that an outage of just half a day could put a business in danger.
The survey shows that customers – both consumer and trade –, who now see the Internet as their primary business communication vehicle, have primarily driven the importance of the web for businesses. As a result, in the event of a connection outage the business is perceived by many to have effectively stopped trading.
Ben White, CEO of Star, explains, “While events like the 2007 floods have highlighted many organisations’ exposure to outages, it is vital that small and medium-sized business leaders stop thinking about business continuity plans in these terms and focus on safeguarding business-as-usual. Internet-driven technologies such as hosted exchange, hosted applications, remote network access using MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) and virtual firewalls are all available today and should be the foundation for businesses serious about business continuity. We’re seeing a huge growth in SMBs using MPLS to connect branch offices and for remote working – primarily driven by the deployment of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
“The Star IT Growing Pains survey showed that while 75% of small and medium-sized businesses have a business continuity plan, only 40% have any physical safeguards. It also states that business leaders feel their business would be under serious threat if it was offline for more than six hours this raises serious concerns.”