Inquiry Spotlight: Disaster Recovery, Q1 2009

Whether it's a power grid failure, ice storm, or Category Five hurricane, when disaster strikes, IT must have disaster recovery plans in place to ensure the continuity of IT systems that support critical business processes. If IT isn't prepared, it will cost the business revenue, market share, customer satisfaction, credibility, or all of the above. Between January 2008 and December 2008 Forrester's IT infrastructure and operations team fielded 1,562 inquiries on a variety of IT-related topics — 121 of which were specifically focused on disaster recovery (DR) from end user IT professionals. Among these inquiries, the most common topics were about DR technology strategy or the "how to" of DR, the outsourcing versus insourcing of DR, and the DR planning process. Although these topics cover only part of the disaster recovery space, they do highlight what is on the minds of IT professionals everywhere.