In modern business practice, it would be considered normal to have a business continuity plan, covering what your business would do during an event which affects your ability to operate normally – combined with a disaster recovery plan, allowing you to rebuild your IT estate. With both plans being tested and updated on a regular basis, including an internet business continuity and disaster recovery test.
With the business continuity plan containing the fine detail on who does what, how and under what circumstances, it is comforting to think you have considered all options and know what document to refer to when an incident happens.
Flood, fire, prevention of access to premises, failure of local public transport, outbreak of illness amongst staff, local phone exchange closure…..the list of possibilities is endless. The common theme being that it will create an impact significant to prevent your business from operating normally.
Internet?
How will you react if you lose your internet connection, either through a serious hardware failure, inability to access your premises normally or damage to the physical connection internally or externally?
I don’t know what your business does, but it would be fair to guess that your use of the internet is, at a minimum something which you use to communicate with customers and suppliers either by email, web portal or IP telephone. With that ability removed, it won’t be long before that lack of communication starts to affect your business. Various statistics are widely available but consensus suggest around 40% of businesses which suffer a ‘disaster’ fail to re-open.
If you haven’t got a business continuity plan, you really need to start putting one together. We found a great resource which could help you UK Government issued business resilience planning document, but if you already have one then what have you considered for your internet connectivity? There are many alternate options which I’d hope are already included;
- Send everyone home to use their own internet
- Dual route leased line internet access to existing site
- Backup ADSL line
- Use a third party site which already has connectivity installed and tested
- Get everyone using mobile dongles
Any or all of these options will make a difference to how you can operate if a significant event affects you. Of course budget makes a difference too. Having a warm standby site available at a moments notice costs a lot of money. Having a backup ADSL line at your existing site is great, and low cost but what happens if access to the site itself is a problem? Using dongles is great in theory but have you ever had to actually try and put more data onto a few dongles, and what if the ones you purchased had no coverage where you need to work from?
It is worth considering backup internet in conjunction with any of these or in place of all of them. A fully managed internet disaster recovery service provided by Fli-Fi which for a relatively small monthly fee ensures you will have connectivity available for your business and your staff within a specific agreed short timeframe, like four hours, at a location of your choice.
The business continuity subscription service includes for a discovery session where all configuration can be agreed and set up, along with two 72 hour tests every year. In addition, it includes for delivery of the hardware so that you all need to do is plug it in and turn it on, with up to a week of real-event usage included each year.
It’s an extremely flexible option that gives you reassurance of being able to complete a couple of tests each year, comfort that you can be up and running in a few hours, along with complete control over where and how your connectivity might get used during a business affecting event.
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Fli-Fi is a UK based business WiFi specialist, delivering connectivity to temporary and challenging environment along with event WiFi to corporate brands, production companies, festivals, event organisers, construction sites and pop up shops. If you would like further information about hiring WiFi or to speak to our experts you can contact us on enquiries@fli-fi.co.uk or 020 3778 0454.
