75,000 stranded passengers
Millions in lost revenue, plus a compensation bill of around £100m. And some serious scuffing of the company’s reputation.
That’s the British Airways IT fiasco, which left hundreds of flights cancelled in May.
But the worst part? It could all have been so easily avoided.
The meltdown was apparently caused by a power surge, itself caused by switching servers back on after an outage. But as the BBC’s technology correspondent wrote, “power management is an essential element of any well-planned IT system”. We couldn’t agree more.
Disaster Recovery (DR) is not a new thing, and even small businesses can afford to put it in place. It usually includes:
- Having a backup data centre in another location, so you can continue operations as normal if something goes wrong.
- Carrying out daily backups of operational data, again to another location, so lost data is never really lost.
- Having in place a tested strategy or procedure for getting things back up and running quickly after a problem happens.
These elements combine to create redundancy – where every part of an IT system is duplicated, so the backup can carry on when something breaks.
If British Airways had a proper DR plan in place, they’d be a lot richer right now. The big question is, why didn’t they?
For everyone else, it’s a wakeup call!
A working disaster recovery system costs less than you think, and could save more than you’d ever want to lose. If you’d like to discuss your needs, our team is here to help.
