Disaster Recovery – Is Your Contact Center Prepared?

With networks airing dramatic and disturbing scenes of inundated Gulf Coast cities and with the frightening magnitude of the tsunami in Southeast Asia still fresh in our memories, companies are more aware than ever that planning and preparation, particularly with regard to critical business systems such as the contact center, is of the utmost importance.

Both global events and legislative initiatives, such as the United States Sarbanes-Oxley regulations and the International Basel II framework, now demand that companies take a closer look at how they would support their contact centers in the event of a disaster. There are a number of factors your organization should take into consideration when building a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

Consider All the Possibilities

First acknowledge that the term “disaster” encompasses a lot of unpleasant possibilities. Get specific about the types of problems your contact center might face:

- Facility disaster
The building is damaged.

- Facility downtime
Power is cut from the facility or resources cannot get to the facility (usually weather related).

- Component disaster/downtime
One or some hardware components within a facility are destroyed or disabled.

- Application disaster/downtime
One or some software applications residing on hardware within the facility are destroyed or disabled.

- Data disaster
Data is corrupted or lost.

- Network disaster
Data networks are compromised or disabled.

- Security disaster
Company security for internal information is breeched and data is affected (destroyed or modified).

Ask the Right Technology Questions

So how do you know if your disaster recovery plan is current and meeting management’s expectations? “Disaster recovery” means different things to different people, but whether your definition focuses on system high availability, system recovery, or system redundancy, it’s important to look at both the technology you have in place and the processes around that technology.

Before you can develop an effective disaster recovery plan, you need to answer these questions about your contact center technology:

- Is the system redundant within itself? Does it have redundant internal workings?
- Is full redundancy required in a disaster situation? (internal company decision)
- Can you run two systems, one primary and one backup, in two different locations?
- Can each of the systems (same location or not) be configured to handle the load for all transactions if one fails?
- Would the two systems share the load under normal operation?
- Does the system have a hot or cold standby if redundant concurrent systems are not desired/required?
- Does the hot standby system automatically start in the case of failure, or is manual intervention required?
- Can the cold standby system automatically/ remotely be started in case of failure, or is manual intervention required?

Aspect Software

Read the full white paper below