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Article : Disaster Recovery: Defeating The Sword Of Damocles

In the cautionary fable "The Sword of Damocles," our young hero envies his friend the King for his riches and fame. Then one day the King offers to trade places for a day. Damocles enjoys his new position immensely until he makes the mistake of glancing up while enjoying a glass of expensive wine. There above his head is a sharp sword, suspended by a single horsehair. He quickly comes to realize how precarious the King's position really is, and how much more he is at risk than anyone else at the Kingdom. It's true every minute of every day.

Those in charge of keeping contact centers continuously up-and-running can relate to this image. For many companies, the contact center is the lifeblood of the organization. It's the primary means of interaction between the enterprise and its customers, and it's expected to be operational 24x7x365. Come hell or high water, as recent events have unfortunately reminded us.

Yet there are always dangers hanging just above the heads of contact center managers, waiting to strike. It could be a developing natural disaster, such as a hurricane, flood, tornado, blizzard, or ice storm. It could be something quick, like a lightning strike on a transformer just outside the office, or a power or telephone line that's cut accidentally during road construction. It could be a regional loss of a power grid or an overload-based blackout. Or it could be something as simple as a virus or Trojan horse that gets introduced into the network via e-mail.

Whatever the cause, there's only one thing for sure. Sooner or later, that horsehair will snap. When it does, you'll be measured by how ready you were for it to happen.

That's why effective disaster recovery and business continuity rely on extensive planning. Yes, they can drain resources up front, at a time when other corporate IT initiatives seem more important. But the business world is littered with the husks of companies that failed to plan ahead, and thus the only thing they could really plan to do was fail. Here's how you can avoid that trap, and replace Damocles' horsehair with a steel cable…and an iron helmet.

Getting Started
The first step to getting a disaster recovery plan in place is to understand what all it encompasses. It's more than just the technology considerations, although those are important. But you also need to understand the operational implications, including physical facilities, how they're supplied with power and phone service, and how your people will react under various stressful conditions. In addition, it's important to realize that once the plan is in place, it will require continuous testing and monitoring of the system, as well as evaluation of its reaction to and handling of both simulations and real disasters.

With that overview in mind, the key areas you'll need to cover are:

  • Automated software and application recovery

  • Hardware redundancy and failover

  • Handling of network failures (both short and extended)

  • Infrastructure to handle complete site failure and site isolation

  • Administrative procedures for failure and recovery

  • Staffing procedures

One thing that's important to remember is that when it comes to software application considerations you have to look beyond the contact center walls to the other internal systems the application touches, e.g. CRM, ERP, financial reporting, and homegrown apps. Otherwise, the contact center will be up and running, but may not be able to do much more than say "hello." And unlike Jerry Maguire, who knows a thing or two about personal client support, you rarely have the customer at "hello." Looking at the various integration points is the only way to assure you're thoroughly covered for recovery.

Your Disaster Recovery Planning Team
Since disaster recovery planning is a very complex and intensive process, you'll want to assemble a multi-departmental team that can think through all the aspects of the business. The team should include technical staff, information processing resources, contact center and service management personnel, executive support, and appropriate monetary resources such as the CFO.

The formation of a Project Team is a critical step. The composition of this team will vary depending on the size of your organization, the number of business units and personnel, budgetary resources available, and the expected delivery date of the plan. In some cases, managers may choose to recommend other senior personnel who have particular expertise that will strengthen the team. Generally, however, the team should include:

  • An experienced Project Manager

  • User representative(s) from the contact center

  • Computer and network operations

  • Systems support

  • Voice, network and communications experts

In addition, to execute the plan you'll need an information systems/technology support team that includes network and communications specialists, facilities management, network development and support, database administration, information systems security, operations, and network support personnel.
Oversight to the project team can be provided by a steering committee that has the authority to provide guidance and make decisions at the corporate level. The steering committee will approve the final, detailed work plan, as well as the schedule for evaluating vendors, testing, and measuring the success of the deployment.
Members of the steering committee should include representatives from key areas of the organization, such as:

  • Information systems

  • Technology support

  • Systems development

  • Network and operations services

  • Voice communications,

  • Key business units

In terms of involvement, it's difficult to make generalizations about which stakeholders should be involved at specific parts of the planning process. Developing an integrated disaster recovery plan that address all business-critical areas, however, cannot be achieved without dedicated personnel who assume responsibility for developing and maintaining the disaster recovery plans, coordinating components and full plan tests, training staff with recovery responsibilities, and updating the plan to reflect changes to the information processing and business environments.

Thinking Through The Process
Once you have the overview and the team in place, it's time to start getting specific. Your first move is to identify the scenarios of failure, starting with Murphy's law – anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Look at the likelihood of failure of the entire site, the network or phone system, a portion of the network or phone system, and individual software and hardware components.

Think about what could cause those failures, i.e. a server can go down due to mechanical failure, a virus or Trojan horse, a power outage, etc. Then determine the impact and cost over time. Not every system is equal, so you'll have to decide whether the potential loss of income due to failure merits protecting it from failure. If it's not mission critical, your best bet may to identify minimal protection options.

When you've decided what is worth protecting, and at what level, it's time to create a strategy. Start by determining which architectural changes are required to make the system safer. Do the same for operational procedures. Then double check the potential win/loss based on projections and vendor proposals to make sure the upside merits making the changes.

The final step involves selecting vendors and implementing the plan. Once hardware, software, and procedures are in place, you'll need to conduct multiple rounds of testing, including controlled failures, in order to evaluate preparedness of both technology and people. This is a strategy both the military and NASA have employed for years, since an unresolved breakdown there can cost lives.

Passing The Test
Maintenance of the disaster recovery plan is absolutely critical to the success of an actual recovery. After all, you don't want to discover there's a flaw in the plan when it's too late to fix.

How often you test depends on the resources and technical sophistication of the systems, but ad hoc testing is recommended to "keep the system honest." This constant monitoring will detect minor hiccups and help provide insights into the strengths and weaknesses not only of the system, but also the recovery plan itself. Simulations of minor outages, testing fault-tolerant operations, and monitoring the system's ability to "synch up" once a problem is resolved are all critical and should be conducted on an ongoing basis.

As you test, evolve the plan where appropriate, paying attention to all aspects. You may find, for example, that while you did a good job with the physical side, certain costs come up that were not anticipated originally. If that happens, identify low-cost alternatives. Also look at whether everything in the plan is necessary, separating the must-haves from the "like-to-haves," so you know how to set priorities and maximize your budget.

Tool Time
Within the contact center, there are a number of different tools and techniques that organizations can use to monitor the health of the center. Preventative tools include:

  • Auditing tools to monitor resource usage (e.g. disk space)

  • Network and systems management tools to monitor and notify technicians when odd or irregular conditions occur

  • Application-specific monitoring and alarming tools to alert technicians to specific warning flags and conditions, including exceptionally long hold times, agent unavailability, agent performance issues, etc.

In addition to those tools, there are a number of "best practices" that can further mitigate the risk of failure, such as:

  • Making information on current conditions available at all levels, including customer notification

  • Use of "resilient" systems that continue to operate when non-critical components are lost (e.g. switch connection, database)

  • Failover at every level, from IVR ports, to agents, to servers, to sites

  • Ability for sites in a virtual contact center to operate as independent "islands" in the event of a network isolation event, and to revert to full virtuality when the network is restored

  • Redundancy wherever possible – in the network and in the local facility

  • Well-tested procedures that provide alternatives when any operational component, system of facility is unavailable

A key factor to consider is that many contact centers are 7x24 operations, with little or no scheduled downtime. As a result, the overarching technology infrastructure must provide options for redundancy and reliability to assure customers are properly serviced, and to assure continued operation across faults inside or outside of the system.

Even with exhaustive protection, failures can occur. In the instance of a failure condition, forward-looking organization can minimize both system "down time" and the potential impact on customers by developing automated processes and procedures, including:

  • Transferring controls, a process that addresses coordination issues with the organization's telecommunications provider, so inbound calls can be moved to different locations and/or queues

  • Ability for contact center agents to relocate connections to a backup system/site

  • Pre-defined transitions to established business rules, required in order to maintain Service Level Agreements in the new configuration

  • Procedures for reverting operations back to the standard system, once the damage has been repaired

The value of running a virtual contact center – via multi-site capabilities – in the event of a disaster was crystallized during the recent hurricane activity in the Southern United States. A number of organizations, including several utilities and software companies, maintaining this virtual architecture were able to transition their contact centers to locations outside the Gulf region, with no downtime and minimal administrative requirements, all transparent to their customers in terms of both quality and timely service.

What The Future Holds
The development and success of future recovery plans does not reset solely on new technology solutions. In order to be successful in the long term, the most important aspect that organizations need to consider is the establishment of proven processes and procedures to complement the technology infrastructure supporting the disaster recovery plan.

One compelling technology that has emerged recently and will improve disaster recovery efforts is software that evaluates and validates the health of a network by better understanding its complexities and nuances. For example, there is a provider that develops and markets software for data, voice, and video that provides visibility into any network. Its software solutions provide actionable information to detect and resolve bottlenecks and correct network faults, and thereby extensively improve application performance. This and similar offerings keep networks up and running.

There have also been significant advances with regard to application resiliency and redundancy. Whereas these functions were previously under the control of technicians constantly monitoring network activity, new technology has enabled these tasks to be largely automated. Of course, a larger-scale outage would necessitate human involvement, but for smaller WAN "hiccups" (e.g. when there's a brief loss of inter-site communication), failovers can be scripted so that they occur instantaneously, and are transparent to the customers waiting in queue.

Ever-Present
Like the King's sword in the tale of Damocles, the sword of system failure in the contact center is ever-present. As they say, it's not a question of if, only of when. A thorough disaster recovery plan, however, will help you deal with it, and protect you when the sword does fall. Yes, it takes time, effort, and money on the front end. But not nearly as much as it does after disaster strikes. Consider it a very wise investment in your business' future.


Today's Tip of the Day - Keep Cost In Perspective

Read today's tip or listen to it on podcast.

Published: Monday, October 24, 2005

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