SunGard says focusing on resilient technology has left some firms flatfooted for business continuity

Business Continuity Forum 

Workplace disruptions have for the first time displaced technology failures as the primary risk of interruption to businesses, according to research by business continuity firm SunGard into the number of invocations by clients of its recovery services in 2009.

SunGard reports that its invocations log revealed that calls for it to step in to firms experiencing disruption had risen by 42% from the previous year, and that workplace-related invocations had risen by 150% year on year, compared with an 8% fall in IT disruptions.

Business continuity failures attributable to the workplace (such as staff being unable to reach the office in case of extreme weather or illness) accounted for 56% of disruptions in 2009, the first time they had constituted a majority of resilience risks.

"People prefer to work in a single office, but the ability for users to connect with information is as critical, if not more critical, than ever before," says Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice-president Europe for SunGard Availability Services.

"The workplace has not formed a lot of business continuity planning. In a power outage, computer rooms often have generators but lots of offices don't," says Tilley. "Disruption to telephones is another problem. It is just as bad having customers unable to speak to you as if your systems go down."

Hardware failures at firms have been in steady decline since 2005, when power blackouts matched them for the first time in causing 27% each of the total disruptions to UK businesses.

Tilley says: "The IT itself has become more resilient, with new trends having moved in such as cloud computing services that offer inbuilt resilience, and of course storing data across two sites means they are less likely to require a recovery."