Wake Up Call:
Is Email An Integral Part of Your Continuity Plans?

By Michael Rosenfelt

In today's global society, where the need for and expectations of instant communication has become the norm, the fastest growing form of communication is clearly email. In fact, in a recent study by Meta Group, eight out of ten surveyed indicated that email is more important to them than the telephone. Additionally, a study in late 2003 by TNS Global Marketing Research group found that email ranked as a vital tool for business workers with nearly 40 percent of those surveyed indicating they "can't live" without email, and over 25 percent reported that email is "important" for what they do at work.

Furthermore, business studies have found that email is directly linked to a company's revenue, productivity, and reputation and has a profound impact on its ability to respond and recover from a disaster or crisis.

Email is Critical and Vulnerable
Along with the growing importance of email in the enterprise, another area is growing as well - the vulnerability of email systems due to natural or manmade threats ranging from hurricanes to major power outages to computer worms and viruses. During 2003, the U.S experienced several powerful hurricanes, a widereaching Northeast power outage and a number of costly computer viruses. With these challenges, as expected, email outages were on the rise according to the TNS survey of business workers. Some 51% of US workers were without email up to four times during 2003! For most businesses, even one email outage is unacceptable. Email is the backbone for most companies' internal business operations and external communications with customers, vendors and partners.

The Options for Ensuring Email Continuity
Businesses have several options to ensure continuity if an email system becomes incapacitated for any reason, including:

Tape back-up: Tape back-up solutions are less expensive than some other solutions. Tape can, however, be slow to deploy, and may not allow email to operate during the outage. Tape restoration systems require logistics such as the tapes, personnel to store, manage and implement them for the recovery, and dedicated hardware. When evaluating tape back-up solutions, consider your ability to thoroughly test when not in actual use.

Server replication systems: These powerful systems are designed for data recovery. Server replication is fast to activate in a crisis and may allow continued operation. The recovery plan can be administered by internal IT personnel. However, if the email system is attacked by a virus, the virus is quickly replicated to bring both the primary and replicated systems down. In addition, this option requires high bandwidth and redundant hardware.

Email continuity services: These email continuity systems offer an off-site hosted service to ensure email continuity during an outage of any kind. Speedy recovery with a minimum of IT personnel involvement, in addition to cost savings from unnecessary hardware, should be considered when evaluating this option.

Selecting, Implementing and Managing an Email Continuity Solution
To select the best email continuity solution for your business, it is important to consider the pros and cons of a selfhosted versus a hosted solution. In examining the selfhost approach, the advantages of complete, internal control should be weighed against the risk of regional disasters taking down both the main and backup email systems - or the complications of a distant hotsite recovery and the time associated with that recovery strategy.

Another key area of consideration is the deployment phase of the email continuity solution. It should be relatively quick and painless for an IT department to get up and running with an email continuity solution - in many cases in less than 24 hours. A thorough analysis should include the cost of IT manpower, the complexity of the solution and the possibility that the cause of the problem will be much broader than email alone. Will the IT department be preoccupied with systemwide recovery issues at the same time as the email disruption? Will this possibility affect the deployment speed and will ongoing management of the email solution further burden an IT department during the crisis?

Ideally, it is an advantage to have an email continuity solution that is technologically flexible for different business architectures - one that works with both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes - and is built on an open source code so there is an extra layer of protection from brand-specific viruses or worms.

These various issues must be reviewed as part of the cost/benefit analysis of the alternative solutions. With a comprehensive review of email criticality and recovery options, the next item is the internal approval process.

Selling Senior Management on Email Continuity
Ask most senior management if they could do business for a day, or even an hour without their email, and you will most likely receive a consistent answer - "no". When faced with the prospect of losing email usage for themselves and their workers they find the situation unacceptable and intolerable. In other words, management expects a failsafe, guaranteed solution that guarantees email availability - no matter what the circumstances.

Senior management recognizes the personal importance of email for their daytoday business communications, but they will also quickly absorb the importance of email to the organization's bottom line - the ability for a business to continue operations and communications even in the midst of an emergency or crisis. Lost email quickly translates into lost business, lost revenues, lost reputation and most importantly to executives - lost control. The ability to use email as the company's key communications channel during a crisis not only keeps the business running, but it can also serve as an invaluable service for business recovery after the emergency.

Don't Overlook Email Continuity
With so many areas to consider for business continuity and disaster recovery, it is important to not overlook the importance of having a specific plan for email continuity. While all the elements of disaster planning and preparedness are important for protecting a company in the time of crisis, it is email continuity that can have the most immediate impact for both uninterrupted business operations and for the organization's crisis communications and recovery. This is your wake up call - is email continuity an integral part of your continuity plans?

About the Author
Michael Rosenfelt is Vice President of Marketing for MessageOne, a leading provider of affordable email continuity services for businesses. MessageOne's stand-by messaging solutions are used by companies worldwide, including Motorola, Young Broadcast and CC West. Michael Rosenfelt can be reached by email at mike_rosenfelt@messageone.com or by telephone at (512) 6524500. To visit MessageOne's website: www.messageone.com