Originally posted to Data Center POST

In our always-on world of technology, business continuity has become vital to the success of critical applications and companies involved in a huge variety of sectors, be it healthcare, finance, telecommunications or otherwise. Business continuity, or a company’s ability to plan for, mitigate or even avoid disasters and their associated operational disruptions, is only growing in importance as data and application access becomes increasingly critical and businesses are facing unprecedented exposures to disrupting events.

Events that challenge continuity can range from weather-related disasters and outages to more reputational incidents like hacking issues or lawsuits, but all can pose repercussions if they take down business functions. In fact, in the past two years, over 50 percent of businesses experienced an unforeseen interruption, and the vast majority (81 percent) of these interruptions caused the business to be closed for one or more days. At the same time, 80 percent of businesses that suffer a major disaster such as hurricanes, fires or cyber-breaches go out of business in 3 years, while 40 percent of businesses that experience a critical IT failure go out of business within one year.

This begs the question: how prepared is your business for operational disruption? Disaster recovery plans can take many forms and often include pre-set policies, tools, and procedures. However, one often underestimated, yet particularly critical, facet of recovery lies in managing end-of-life assets and equipment disposition. IT Asset Disposition (otherwise known as ITAD) can protect your business from the damaging effects of disruption and safeguard business continuity in a number of ways, and should always be part of an effective disaster recovery plan.

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