Business Continuity Planning

ICT systems are expected to be available 24/7 to internal and external users regardless of the circumstances, but the nature of uncertainty in complex and dynamic environments makes Business Continuity Planning more relevant today than ever before. Organisations providing 24/7 ICT availability become strategic dilemmas for decision makers, hence, to ensure operations, managers must balance the costs involved in providing an almost zero downtime infrastructure for information availability with the trust ICT users have on a given organization. Decision makers need to assess possible disruptions and vulnerabilities that can impact on ICT availability to all users. This chapter argues that approaches, such as virtualisation, can provide cost advantages to organizations by ensuring availability and resilience through flexible system implementation, and to achieve this objective, committed strategic managers must have arguments to defend this view.