What do recent hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados and other catastrophes around the world have to do with your role as a CIO? Plenty, when it comes to the traditional task of “keeping the lights on” 24/7. Many still consider the business continuity and disaster recovery aspects of IT as the most basic: Keep servers up and running; commission backup sites for emergencies, and replicate everything. That’s still sound advice, but in an age of cloud computing, virtualization, mobile devices and consumer driven IT, the basics are anything but basic.

In the past, when a disaster occurred, business was at a standstill until backup kicked in. Now, as wireless voice and data networks become more reliable, employees are ready to work remotely from their tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices — but only if the email server, VPN and other critical systems are up and access is available.

For example, many people who lost electricity this past week during the hurricane that hit the eastern U.S. were able to stay online via email and social networks and thanks to battery-powered mobile devices, Internet cafes and local libraries. That put extra pressure on IT departments to do their part: ensure that central servers were up and running so that business could continue. Thanks to backup and e-trading, the New York Stock Exchange opened as usual after the storm, and many in the financial industry — although they were unable to go to their offices — used Web access and Wi-Fi near home to participate in the trading day.

It’s clear that the business losses that result without adequate protection are huge. Based on a survey sponsored late last year by CA Technologies, the average global organization annually loses 545 person hours as a result of IT downtime. The survey, of 2,000 North American and European organizations conducted by Coleman Parkes Research firm, also found that “IT outages are frequent and lengthy — substantially damaging companies’ reputations, staff morale and customer loyalty. Despite this, 56 percent of organizations in North America and 30 percent in Europe don’t have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery policy.”

A Smart Enterprise Exchange article last year also reported that a startlingly low percentage of businesses are actually adopting virtual backup despite the benefits in business continuity/disaster recovery initiatives.

What are some other options? As we reported, businesses are increasingly considering cloud options to help get data back online when disaster strikes. Several new products and services aimed at the need for virtual backup were introduced this week at VMWorld.

Of course some traditional advice still applies — with an updated twist. For instance, make sure you have remote access to your entire business — phones, services and email — even if you use a cloud provider. And be sure that your files, videoconferencing and all other databases and services are completely, and securely, accessible from a computer with a Web browser.

Mother Nature will continue to have her way, so backup protection is critical. When your mobile workforce logs on, will the enterprise be ready? Share your storm stories with your peers on the Exchange.

Paula  Klein

Editor and Community Manager

CIOs have faced criticism in the last year or so for not embracing social media, consumer IT and cloud platforms in their enterprises. Many experts — some quoted on Smart Enterprise Exchange, in fact — were quick to say that CIOs must adapt more rapidly to the demands of their business users, partners and consumers.

Well, that seems to be changing. While challenges remain, the days of the "CI-No" are waning, based on the results of a new research report published by IDC and CA Technologies.

The white paper, titled, “IT Consumers Transform the Enterprise: Are You Ready?” finds that: “Consumer adoption of the cloud is here, with cloud-based applications and social networking becoming the norm.” Specifically, 19 percent of those whom IDC defines as worldwide leaders are improving agility, gaining competitive advantage and seeing benefits by scaling up consumer technologies.

Follow the Leaders

IDC defines “leaders” as IT organizations that are self-reportedly proactive in their adoption of public cloud, mobile and social technologies. Fully two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents are well on their way to integrating these technologies into their IT strategy, according to the research. Where does that leave the CIO?

According to Crawford Del Prete, IDC's Chief Research Officer: "Today's CIOs have an opportunity to lead both business and IT innovation as they help their organizations decide how to best exploit the trend toward consumerization and personalization of IT."

Although 15 percent of respondents said that consumer technology is brought into the enterprise with no IT involvement, Del Prete sees opportunities for CIOs “to work closely with business decision makers to create safe, secure, well-managed environments that allow the company to communicate and collaborate with customers and employees anytime, anywhere.”

It’s still IT’s job to “lead the charge in order to ensure that customers are engaged, confidential data is protected, employee productivity is enabled, and the enterprise is getting the greatest return possible on every IT dollar it spends," he says.

The report concludes that we are currently at a “tipping point” where mainstream organizations will continue to aggressively embrace the adoption of consumerized technologies for the enterprise, and others must make their move.

Of course, the study notes both opportunities and challenges for IT departments and “CIOs will continue to face tremendous pressure to satisfy the growing demand for data and services from business users within their organizations”, said Dave Hansen, General Manager, CA Technologies. Yet, they are already responding by offering new services and collaborating with stakeholders, he said.

IDC surveyed 804 IT executives from organizations of more than $1 billion in revenue, and separately surveyed 1,040 IT consumers who use the public cloud, smart mobile devices, and/or social networks for personal or business purposes. Taken together, the reports shed light on the state of consumer-driven IT in several ways. Key among these:

• Leaders conduct more interactions with their customers via smart mobile devices (41% compared with 28% of mainstream organizations).
• Leaders are more proactive when it comes to social media. They are more likely to use social networks to capture detailed insights about their customers (44% compared with 24% of mainstream organizations) and are more concerned about providing a consistent user experience to customers via social networks across all devices or browsers.
• Leaders’ use of cloud services outpaces that of their mainstream counterparts. Thirty-four percent use Platform as a Service (PaaS), 32 percent use Software as a Service, and 27 percent use Infrastructure as a Service.
• Leaders’ use of interactive technologies such as video, Skype and chat is increasing.
• Leaders are more concerned about their ability to guarantee an end-to-end user experience via mobile devices (41%, compared with 27% of the mainstream organizations).
• Leaders use public or private cloud to provide remote personal productivity

Want more information? Read our feature article on collaborative tools and Navigating the Social Business. Interestingly, we found that many times IT and CIOs — even at large organizations such as AARP and JetBlue — are supporting social media strategies that are initiated and managed by other business units or social media “owners.”

Where does your business lie on this spectrum? Does IT lead social media or support the initiatives of business units and stakeholders? Share your experiences on the Exchange.

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange