What’s in your data center?
While a seemingly innocuous question, the increasing levels of abstraction such as IaaS, PaaS, and SDNs present a real challenge to IT operations and security teams. The dynamic allocation of applications and components adds yet another level of complexity to IT operations. How do IT teams inventory what systems and software are running when they are constantly changing? How do you debug a performance problem when the application code may be migrating from on-premise to off-premise servers and back again?
Assuring Business Continuity with IT Continuity Architect
IT Continuity is all about understanding what you have, knowing what is at risk, and knowing what to do to keep people working at all times. Continuity should in fact be driven and supported by IT, but you have to start at the beginning (what you have, how it ties to the business, and what is at risk) to effectively manage IT driven continuity, not at the end (specific BCDR tools when a problem arises). This approach is called IT Continuity Management (ITCM) - it allows IT to automate the process for building and maintaining highly effective business continuity and disaster recovery strategies by connecting business continuity service level requirements to the underlying IT infrastructure needed to keep a business running when disaster strikes. Done properly, it highlights any inconsistencies that could prevent successful recovery during a disaster, allowing IT to easily maintain disaster recovery readiness.