Business Continuity is a Conversation

I think about Business Continuity all the time. In the past two months, my cable service has gone out 3 times and I have 2 power outages here in Tampa. When the Internet is down, there isn’t much I can do since everything is Internet.

Do business consider this? Not often enough. As a telecom consultant, it is my job to point it out to the business decision maker. How much is an hour of down time worth?

Last week, Comcast suffered a massive voice outage nationally. Windstream, CenturyLink and others have all had widely reported outages this year. Outages happen more often now because of a best effort mentality. No more five-nines.

Hacks happen every day. Unprotected computers are infected almost immediately. No one thinks it will happen to them. It is the hurdle in selling security (and insurance). Why worry? It won’t happen here.

Ramsonware is scary. It is occurring more often. A smart backup can alleviate some of the hardship.

Business Continuity (BC/DR) is becoming more important for businesses every day if they recognize it. One indicator: do they utilize battery backups everywhere? Then start the conversation there.

SD-WAN will solve some security, fail-over and BC issues. It might be time to learn about how.

On the carrier side, AT&T is going deep into SDN and NFV. AT&T is releasing their SDN software, ECOMP, to open source. They are talking about being able to use white box CPE globally. Via 4G that CPE will download the necessary software to be a router or firewall or what-have-you.

TelePacific Rolls Out Advanced SD-WAN Connectivity in Nationwide Pilot.

SD-WAN is fueling 150% growth at Aryaka.

Verizon is partnering with Viptela to offer a hosted SD-WAN service.

Masergy, XO, CenturyLink and Mettel – even Vonage – have all added SD-WAN overlay services. Don’t you think you should know what they are when your mid-market clients ask?

Join us for another Blab! about SD-WAN on 8/3 at Noon ET.

Tags: disaster recovery, mpls, NFV, outage, SDN, security, WAN
Related tags: business continuity, business, happen, often, outages, continuity