Criticall eNews Bulletin - Business Continuity News and Information

BC Expo – undisputed leader!

After the ironic collapse of the company called “Survive!” and their associated annual business continuity conference, the BC Expo has become by far the most important event of the year for the BC Professional.

Run over 2 days, on 2-3 April, it narrowly misses coinciding with April Fools day. A common message arising from this successful event is that the real fools unto themselves are those who develop a BC Plan on paper, but never test it in practice.

Inevitably they are prone to being caught out by scenarios they hadn’t considered, such as sustained loss of access to wide geographical areas due to flooding. The number of businesses that still house their IT systems on ground floors, where they are subject to flood damage continues to surprise investigators.

Related links
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BC Expo
BC Conference

		In this issue: BC Expo – undisputed leader! FT: automated call-cascade Always on Internet New 60 Second Survey Survey Results Dell buys MessageOne Life Saver makes a splash BCIP Criticall Comment Darla Delivers Resource Corner

FT: automated call-cascade

The Financial Times ran an article titled “Cascade that can help avert disaster” on 30/01/08, describing how there has been an upsurge in demand for automated notification systems in the wake of the Virginia Tech campus massacre.

Many deaths could have been avoided if the college had used a simple SMS text-based notification system to alert students of the potential danger. In fact, only emails were sent out. Other US government institutions are rapidly looking to deploy such systems to avoid such a tragedy recurring.

Always on Internet

Mobile phone service providers are offering increasingly competitive routes to provide you with high speed internet access when mobile.

Coverage and actual maximum speeds vary (Vodafone currently have the best offer for the least money), with prices starting off as little as £15 per month for most typical users, after purchasing a “dongle” (up to £100).

For key executives, such an option gives great flexibility in terms of how their organisations can claim to respond to and manage any given crisis scenario.

Related Links
Vodafone Mobile Internet

New 60 Second Survey

To complete this issue's brand new 60 second survey, click here.

Each Criticall eNews Bulletin includes a new 60 Second Survey on Business Continuity related issues. The results are then made available on the website and in the following eNews edition.

We are now a community of over 6,500 Business Continuity professionals, so you joining in will make it truly representative.

Survey Results

Here is a summary of the results from last time. For a full graphical breakdown of the results from our last survey, click here.

Not surprisingly, the top BC threat was deemed by 25% of participants to be 'Loss of Site' followed closely behind by 'Utility Outage' at 22%.

We found that 34% of organisations hadn't tested their BC plans at all. Of those who had tested their plans, 55% did it on an annual basis. 31% of participants don't yet have a BC plan (contact us if you need our Free Key BC resources to get you going!)

'Budgetary constraints' proved to the key limiting factor in BC planning at 25% while the trend for BC planning is definitely a growing one with almost half (44%) of all companies drafting their first plan in the past five years.

62% of our survey participants had heard of BS25999 but havent' yet looked into it and surprisingly, 75% of companies represented had not yet been directly affected by the so-called 'Subprime Mortgage Crisis'.

In Other News:

Dell buys MessageOne

Dell has acquired American firm MessageOne (MO) for $155m.

The main motivation appears to be for their email backup ‘SaaS’ (software as a service) offering, but MO also provide hosted notification services to a few UK clients in the UK, including John Lewis.

Dell Logo

The future for MO’s notification business seems less certain. The step is seen as a further weighty endorsement for the SaaS model, followed so successfully by the likes of Google, Salesforce.com and indeed, Criticall.

Related Links
Dell Press Release
MessageOne Press Release

Life Saver makes a splash

An Ipswich based businessman has invented a hand held water filter that is making waves.

The bottle, which is on the market for £190, is able to make foul-smelling water drinkable within seconds. The bottle has already made it's mark at various defence and camping shows while some are recognising the bottle's potential in disaster situations such as floods and earthquakes.

At the heart of the bottle is a filter with pores that are 15 billionths of a metre in diameter - small enough to filter out bacteria and viruses.

Related Links
Life Saver Systems
Guardian Aritcle

BCIP

A new company called BCIP is looking to bridge the gap between business interruption insurance premiums and a company’s assessed degree of preparedness for business continuity.

More will follow in future editions of eNews, but their offering is expected to include online self-assessment, auditing in line with BS25999 and reduced insurance premiums for those better prepared for disruptions.

Criticall Comment

Good things come in 3’s! Criticall will launch Version 3 of its “Nerv8” technology at the BC Expo.

This global software & infrastructure platform underpins all Criticall’s offerings, the popularity of which have driven the company’s revenues to grow 3-fold in 3 years. Ian Hammond, Criticall’s CEO, will be a key speaker at the BC Expo on unified enterprise messaging. Come and visit us on Stand 366.

Darla Delivers

Here's your chance keep a clean conscience whilst having a bit of fun on the job in the name of BCM research!

Late Friday evening, with mission critical deadlines looming, find out how DR-Darla saves the day when things are looking pretty grim at SmartCo*.

Click here to watch our new emergencyCall movie: "Darla Delivers".

Are you more like DR-Darla or BC-Bob? Let us know.

Resource Corner

Useful links and events for the business continuity professional.

Events
BC Expo 2008
April 2nd-3rd, 2008

BAPCO annual Conference and Exhibition
April 23rd-24th, 2008

Annual Emergency Planning Conference & Exhibition 2008
June 16th/17th, 2008

Intellect Annual Dinner 2008
May 14th, 2008

'Dealing With Disasters' Conference
July 10th/11th, 2008

Links
Bapco
The Emergency Planning Society
Intellect UK
SEISO
The Business Continuity Institute
UK Resilience
Data Storage Expo
Continuity Forum
Continuity Shop
Mi5

Criticall eNews

The Criticall eNews bulletin is produced and published by Criticall Limited to advance and encourage the global business continuity community.

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