Delta Airlines, California DMV, Breazeale Sachse & Wilson LLP etc. – these are few names which we don’t get to hear much however all these companies have a common story to share.

So, what is this common story? The answer is simple – Improper business continuity & disaster recovery plan resulting in huge financial losses & goodwill.

We must understand the fact that no matter how careful we are, disaster can strike any business, anytime, anywhere. All we can do is take proper precaution & learn from experience.

What is Business Continuity?

In today’s world, organizations need to protect themselves from unforeseen business interruptions & its financials impact. In simpler terms, a business continuity plan ensures that your business remains operational when a natural disaster or any other crisis affects your business.

For example – Year 2020 was a watershed moment for us due to the COVID pandemic. Many organizations had to move from Work from Office “WHO” to Work from Home “WFH” model while others had to shut shop temporarily or permanently due to improper business continuity plan. It’s important to have a proper business continuity & disaster recovery plan in place to safeguard organization’s asset, people & property.

Why Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery plan fails?

To be honest, no one would like to create a business continuity plan which is likely to fail eventually.

So, the question is why a well-defined thought-out plan fails? Let’s talk about some common reasons on why business continuity & disaster recovery plan fails –

• Improper risk assessment including cyber attacks
• Lack of proper testing before deploying the plan
• Undefined strategies
• Ineffective recovery strategies including backups

Some key example where business continuity plan failed –

• Delta Airlines – Back in 2016, the company suffered a huge IT infrastructure outage, resulting in $100 million loss in revenue. The disaster could have been avoided if the company had an effective data recovery strategy in place & a modern back up system

• California DMV – In the same year, California DMV had a huge malfunction when their backup system went offline due to power outage. The DMV was offline for the consumer for several days damaging company’s reputation

• Breazeale Sachse & Wilson LLP – Back in 2005, Hurricane “Katrina” battered the east coast of the United Sates causing widespread damage & destruction. Breazeale Sachse & Wilson LLP, the law firm lost all their confidential documents because they used to keep everything in hard copies at site. This could have been avoided if they had a proper backup & recovery system

Now that, we understand what business continuity plan is & its importance, let us discuss on how Anaplan would like to address some these issues –

• How Anaplan Offices are spread across globe?

Anaplan has 17 offices covering multiple continents & time zones. Its global headquarter is based out of San Francisco, California; however, its cores development & technical support team is based out of York, UK. In event of any unforeseen circumstances, all development & technical team can work remotely using secure VPN connections, to provide ongoing support.

•  Data Centers & Back up Model

Anaplan Infrastructure is primarily hosted on Equinix International Business Exchange (IBX) data centers, based out of Virginia, and Amsterdam with 24×7 x 365 coverage support. To ensure data integrity, all applications & customer data are stored within the data center itself.

All backups (Workspace & Models) are maintained at both primary data center & various AWS facility like Ireland or Oregon etc. In event of any disaster, the secondary infrastructure can be activated with minimal downtime & disruptions.

• Disaster Recovery Plan

In event of any major catastrophe resulting in complete loss of primary data centers, the backup AWS facility will be used as a recovery tool. Anaplan runs a disaster recovery plan on a quarterly level & it’s well documented

• How to prevent Cyber and physical attacks?

To counter increasing number of cyber-attacks, Anaplan has contracted Verisign to mitigate DDoS. Any unauthorized connections can be restricted by built-in firewall. Customer can access Anaplan only via secure encrypted HTTPS / TLS connections. To ensure secure infrastructure, vulnerability scans & penetration tests are performed regularly.

The data centers have 24×7 monitoring including CCTVs, multiple authentication points, biometric scans etc. to ensure a complete secure environment.

Conclusion

Anaplan Infrastructure is quite resilient with primary & secondary backups to ensure that the business continuity doesn’t get effected in event of any eventualities. In case of major disaster, the disaster recovery plan can be implemented by the support staff ensuring ongoing operations. It’s also important to revaluate strategy in case if there are any short comings with the current system, so that the same can be dragonized & implement quickly.