Roberta Witty

A member of the Gartner Blog Network

Entries Tagged as 'Availability Risk'


Crisis Management Is About Managing Facts and Emotions

by Roberta J. Witty  |  June 3, 2009  |  Comments Off

Last week, I attended the IntraPoint User Forum in Norway, and I came away with a real education about the extreme measures some enterprises in the oil and gas and transportation industries take to provide the safest possible environments for their workers and their customers. Just a couple of examples: tracking every single ship traveling [...]

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Update Your Pandemic Plan NOW

by Roberta J. Witty  |  April 26, 2009  |  2 Comments

The recent outbreaks of the swine flu are highlighting the need for organizations to have pandemic plans that address workforce absenteeism rates of 40% or higher. There are 20 laboratory-confirmed human cases in California, Texas, Ohio, Kansas and New York. In fact, we’re in Chicago for the Gartner Business Continuity Management Summit and we’ve already [...]

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Sahana: A Free, Open Source Disaster Relief Management System

by Roberta J. Witty  |  April 22, 2009  |  3 Comments

Sometimes the best things in life are still free, and good news can come from surprising sources. On Tuesday, Rick DeLotto and I were briefed by the Sahana Project, an award winning, free and open source, web-based disaster relief management system designed to “Help alleviate human suffering and help save lives through the efficient use [...]

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Want to test your enterprise’s ability to manage its way through a crisis?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  April 1, 2009  |  Comments Off

Many enterprises have successful (up-to-date and exercised) recovery plans in place for technology outages, or for a disaster that strikes the data center.  But they aren’t as prepared to handle the public communications, community/government coordiation and workforce continuity aspects of a crisis.  Recognizing that gap in their overall business resilience, a growing number of organizations are implementing [...]

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How Can the BCM Profession Survive the Worldwide Economic Crisis?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 18, 2009  |  1 Comment

The ongoing global economic crisis is having a severe impact on business continuity management (BCM), in the United States and elsewhere. Senior managers are being downsized to cut head count and compensation costs. Recovery projects and enhancements are being delayed or canceled altogether as IT budgets are slashed. But there is some good news: Gartner [...]

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Do layoffs threaten your business continuity plans?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 16, 2009  |  1 Comment

Continuity, recovery and resiliency managers really have their work cut out for them during this economic crisis.  As the workforce shrinks, recovery plans quickly become out-of-date.  Do you know how accurate your plans are right now?  Management isn’t even thinking about this right now – but you should be.  Read my colleague Rick DeLotto’s new post [...]

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Impact of the Fiscal Squeeze on your City affects your banks’ BCP…

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 10, 2009  |  Comments Off

My colleague Rick DeLotto from Gartner’s Banking and Investment Industry Advisory Service, granted me permission to re-print his most recent Gartner blog post on the impact of the financial crisis on bank business continuity management plans. Read his post below. Rick DeLotto here again—and I have got to stop watching the morning news… Here in the [...]

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How Mature are Your BCM and IT DRM Programs?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 9, 2009  |  Comments Off

I’m researching the state of maturity of BCM and IT DRM programs.  What I know is that the process shouldn’t require hours of time, pages of documentation and teams of people to execute. So here’s where I’d like your help: Take Gartner’s self-assessment to determine your company’s BCM maturity.   http://www.gartnerinfo.com/rate3/index.html  

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Stop Thinking Like a Recovery Manager!

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 7, 2009  |  Comments Off

While on Wall St. in the mid-90s, the nickname my trading floor senior executive gave me was the “Fire, Flood and Bomb Lady”.  Ouch!  I’ve come a long way as they say, and so should every manager responsible for business continuity starting now.  At the NEDRIX Winter Conference last week, discussion focused on how to take the results of [...]

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Personal Preparedness – What Are You Doing to Prepare Your Workforce?

by Roberta J. Witty  |  March 4, 2009  |  Comments Off

Every enterprise BCM program is dependent on its workforce to be part of its recovery efforts.  No workforce, no recovery.  But is your workforce prepared to come to the enterprise’s rescue when they themselves are impacted by the event?  You can’t demand that workers be there for you, but you can prepare them to be [...]

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