IT Execs Must Fight for Disaster Recovery Money

Computerworld - NEW YORK -- Business continuity managers said at a conference here last week that they're fighting to keep the budgetary ground gained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in order to ensure that disaster recovery sites remain staffed and online.

"I think the biggest challenge is always money. That's a constant battle," said Dennis Sparrow, data center director at the New York Board of Trade. "I think every company does it. Once things have settled down, we get complacent."

About a half-dozen other attendees at the 2005 Business Continuity and Corporate Security Conference agreed with Sparrow, saying that their jobs often require them to act as facilitators in bringing together different business operations behind a common goal: data security and availability.

"Business continuity budgets are not getting the respect a lot of folks in this town would like to see," said Larry Tabb, an analyst at The Tabb Group, a Westboro, Mass.-based consulting and market research firm that tracks financial services IT issues.

Explaining the Need

Roseann McSorley, managing director of business continuity management at Deutsche Bank Americas in New York, said that every two to three months, she has to go before an executive committee and detail her systems requirements and projected costs.

"I'm saying, 'I don't generate any revenue, but I need some money,' " said McSorley, who is also chairperson of Contingency Planning Exchange Inc., a New York-based professional association. "I shouldn't be sitting there alone."

McSorley has begun involving her company's technology executives in the meetings to help her explain to the committee why the bank needs to spend money on business continuity and why contingency planning must be part of the negotiating process on any acquisitions or outsourcing deals.

"9/11 was three years ago now, and the attention has waned," said Adam Skupienski Jr., a project manager in the business continuation group at Prudential Financial in Newark, N.J. Because of that, Skupienski said, just keeping end users alert to disaster recovery plans is a challenge.

Until the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the New York Board of Trade's data center and trading floor were both located in a building on the World Trade Center site that was destroyed when the neighboring twin towers collapsed. Now its data center and trading floor are in separate locations within New York, Sparrow said.

Steven Henne, vice president of business continuity at The Bank of New York Inc., said the bank expects by the fourth quarter to complete a project to consolidate three production data centers into one and move the centralized facility about 800 miles away from the contingency site.