Like everyone else who saw the hurricane-spawned devastation in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, I was stunned by the sheer scale of the destruction. Of course, my heart went out to the victims, but as I watched the TV coverage, other thoughts also kept running through my head. As a resident of the hurricane-vulnerable part of the country, I was thinking what everyone on the Atlantic—from southern Virginia down to the Gulf coast—was probably thinking as they watched Katrina’s march up the Mississippi: “How long before something like that comes to my town?”
Which is why disaster recovery is on my mind.
I speak to large groups around the world, and when I get the chance, I like to ask the question, “How many of you have a disaster-recovery plan?” Typically, 20 to 40 percent of the crowd raises their hands. Next, I ask, “How many of you have ever gone in on a Saturday with a few new machines and a handful of CD-ROM discs and backup tapes to try it out?” Invariably, most of the hands go down, leaving perhaps 5 percent of the crowd with their hands up. . . .
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