Even a small-scale calamity can create disaster for your business if it prevents you from quickly restoring the mission-critical operations on which your customers rely.

That’s why we talk about ‘business continuity’ and always ask this question: If your major systems go down — including your servers— how will you continue doing business?  Some technology-dependent capabilities are more time-sensitive than others:

• Email. If the business can’t function long without it, this capability needs to be restored ASAP.
• The phone system. How long can your business afford to be phoneless?
• Invoicing. Here you may have a bit more time — perhaps two days, maybe a week — before the business suffers.
• Customer-facing web services. If your business makes money via the Internet, losing these operations even for a few minutes can hurt the bottom line.

The list goes on. To ensure the continuity of your business you need to review every-thing carefully and make sure that when your systems go down you have a reliable way to get your key operations up and running in a timely fashion.