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