Thursday 5 November 2009

So, How Responsible Are We For Our Client's Networks?

The last new drive is in and the array is now in rebuild mode. So far, there are no errors coming up.

There is about 3 hours give or take for this rebuild process to complete.

These types of situations really bring home the depth and the weight of our responsibility for our client's livelihoods. If this box dies before the rebuild completes, we are ready to Swing and recover. The Swing could be done before they get in tomorrow morning and thus not cost them anything in lost productivity.

Do we really, and I mean _really_, know the value of our client's business in terms of dollars per hour?

If the hardware quit anytime during business hours or before we had the chance to prepare our disaster recovery plans the costs to our client would have been huge.

It would take us at least an hour or two to fail them over to the second server and sync the data on it from the ShadowProtect backup. There would also be lost time due to their client files that would not be up to speed.

Anyone hazard a guess as to the productivity costs per hour for this 15 seat accounting firm?

How about a thousand dollars per hour? How about two thousand per hour or even more since most of the folks in this firm are CGAs and up?

When this type of situation is at hand, getting to sleep at night can be very difficult. Yes, in this case we are now prepared. But, the possible impact to our client's business is not an easy thing to pass off as superfluous and thus weighs heavy on the back of the mind.

In this day and age where small businesses are totally reliant on their technology we truly do hold our client's livelihoods in our hands.

Philip

Sent from my SBS Integrated Windows Mobile® phone.
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