Gartner Says Less Than 25 Percent of Global 2000 Enterprises Have Invested in Comprehensive Business Continuity Planning

Business Wire, Oct 8, 2002

Business Editors

Symposium/ITxpo 2002

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 8, 2002

Analysts at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002 Discuss Importance for

Real-Time Enterprises to Implement Business Continuity Planning

More companies are trying to become a real-time enterprise (RTE), but in the race to get there, many enterprises are not implementing critical business continuity plans, according to Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT and ITB).

Gartner analysts said less than 25 percent of Global 2000 enterprises have invested in comprehensive business continuity planning, and 50 percent have fully tested disaster-recovery plans. Gartner analysts presented these findings today during Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002, which is taking place October 6-October 11 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

"For many real-time enterprises, a four- to 24-hour site outage would cause irreparable damage to the enterprise," said Donna Scott, vice-president and research director for Gartner. "Because the risks are greater with real-time enterprises, the business continuity plan must address new scenarios, and BC processes must integrate with a greater number of enterprise processes."

The foundations of business continuity planning success are senior management sponsorship and participation, and building business continuity into enterprise culture by weaving business continuity processes into the life cycle of every project. However, Gartner research shows that by 2007, less than 35 percent of large enterprises will build business process continuity into the project life cycle.

"With real-time enterprise applications, it is critical that business continuity be built into the life cycle for new applications and business process enhancement projects so that availability and recovery requirements are built into the architecture and design," said Scott.

To determine appropriate availability investments, enterprises need to understand the consequences of downtime, which will aid in justifying investments for operational availability and business continuity. A first step in developing a business continuity plan is performing a business impact analysis, where critical business processes are identified and prioritized, and costs of downtime are evaluated over time.

Traditional business continuity plans provide 24-to 72-hour application/business process recoverability. With technology more intrinsic and outage costs escalating, many enterprises need shorter recovery times for critical applications. High-availability techniques are escalating, especially for real-time enterprise applications, enabling enterprises to achieve recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) in minutes, rather than days. Although rapid real-time enterprise recovery is expensive, the alternative could jeopardize an enterprise's survival.

"The most important activity on which an enterprise should embark is ensuring that, regardless of what their spending is, it is spent in the right place -- to protect the most-critical business processes. Real-time enterprises cannot afford to accept risks associated with business continuity vulnerabilities -- the consequences could be fatal," Scott said.

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the IT industry's largest and most strategic conference, providing business leaders with an insightful look at the future of IT. For more than 10,000 IT professionals from the world's leading enterprises, Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of their annual planning efforts. Attendees are responsible for more than $35 billion in IT spending for their respective companies. For more information about Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002, please visit www.gartner.com/symposium or call 1-800-778-1997.

Gartner, Inc. is a research and advisory firm that helps more than 10,500 clients understand technology and drive business growth. Gartner's businesses consist of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting, Gartner Measurement and Gartner Events. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants, in more than 90 locations worldwide. Fiscal 2001 revenue totaled $963 million. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.