The Hindu : Disaster recovery gains importance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 10, 2002

Business

Business

Disaster recovery gains importance

By Preeti Mishra

BANGALORE DEC. 9. In the aftermath of the September 11 episode last year, banks and data centres among other verticals realised the importance of disaster recovery systems. Besides ontime service delivery, companies needed to be able to recover critical information to ensure business continuity in the event of a calamity. Disaster recovery has now assumed growing importance in facility management (FM).

With a proper disaster recovery system in place, the facility manager of an enterprise would be able to track its employees and assess infrastructural damages during a catastrophe. Facilities and infrastructure assets are a significant investment for any company and comprise over 35 per cent of an organisation's total assets.

Facility management is the practice of coordinating the physical workplace (infrastructure such as buildings and the like) with the people and work of the organisation. Indian companies are slowly realising the importance of facility management, avered P. Uthappa, country manager-services, Allied Digital, a facility management provider.

Given the importance of disaster recovery, this aspect of FM has been conservatively estimated as a $1 billion market (annually) with a growth rate of 7-10 per cent. While companies like Facility Information Systems and PeriGrind offer modules for disaster recovery, software firms such as Infosys Technologies have built in-house computing solutions for the same.

Archibus Inc, a leading facility management software company with a 66 per cent market share, has evolved a software that integrates disaster recovery with FM funtionalities. "Disaster recovery gained precedence after last year's 9/11 attacks. Our software will enable the company to account for lost assets thus speeding the process of filing claims,'' S. K. Mohanty, FM Solutions Pvt. Ltd. told The Hindu. Incidentally, FMS is Archibus' authorised business partner in India.

While the cost of implementation is high at $50,000 to $80,000 for a half-million sq. ft., there are scaled down packages available for small and mid-sized companies. The ROI (return-on-investment) can be recorded in two years.

Another interesting feature of the Archibus/FM software is that it can be integrated to the Palm Top, PDA or the Internet enabling the company to get inventory/employee reports from virtually any of its globally located offices. In India, companies like HP, Lucent and Texas Instruments have already put such systems in place.

FMS is now in talks with Infosys and Satyam for implementation of the disaster recovery Archibus/FM software.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business