…it’s about business
With all the talk about business continuity and end-to-end solutions, it’s strange that everyone is still so narrowly focused on recovery and technology. Even business continuity specialists always default to talking about recovering systems and networks.
True, technology is the infrastructure that supports most businesses and as such is a critical component of business continuity. So is recovery of the hardware and software infrastructure. But unfortunately, the real reason for this emphasis is too often self-serving. Companies that offer “recovery” solutions have made huge investments in technology and infrastructure that understandably guide the direction of their solutions. While they claim custom solutions geared to business, look a little closer and you’ll see that sooner or later, everything goes back to their technology and recovery offerings.
The downside of this self-fulfilling prophesy is much more than philosophy. It creates a pervasive confusion in the marketplace between continuity and recovery…between keeping the business running in the first place and restoring it after it has been interrupted.
It masks the difference between a practical, real-world solution that comfortably coexists with your business’s primary mission, and one that seems to develop a life of its own. It makes a well-camouflaged, one-size-fits-all approach seem like a tailored, custom strategy and blurs the distinction between continuous availability hardware and business continuity architectures. And it means the difference between a cost-effective, risk-balanced solution and one costing more… sometimes millions more!
…it’s about focus
Your focus is to keep business running at all times…not at all costs.
Ours is to help you find the best way of doing so with proportionate solutions that reduce the cost of true continuity to that of simple recoverability without increasing your risk or exposure.
Sound confusing? That’s where WTG can help.
WTG starts where the others leave off. We specialize in pragmatic, custom architected business continuity solutions and are the experts of choice when it comes to achieving continuous operation in complex, multi-platform, multi-site, enterprise-wide environments.
Our entire focus is to develop and implement business continuity capabilities… complete business continuity capabilities. Capabilities designed to last and address all of the important areas, not just the sweet spots that the mass market focuses on. Our methodology fills the holes left by most others and addresses critical topics like business process analysis, application data cycles, production fail-over, preemptive crisis communications and managed roll-outs.
Our focus is fundamentally different. We start with the business process and end at continuity. Recovery actually falls somewhere in the middle.
…it’s about balance
Real-world business continuity solutions require balance. Balance between technology issues and business drivers…between internal resources and external components…between in-house knowledge and specialized expertise. And between systems recovery and business continuity.
A balanced solution must provide recovery as a component of continuity, not an alternative. Meeting this challenge in complex business environments requires a combination of technical skills, application knowledge, recovery expertise, and business acumen. It also requires the creativity and motivation to create solutions that leverage every legitimate option to your benefit.
Our Iterative Business Process Decomposition approach identifies mission-critical process dependencies better than the traditional business impact analysis (BIA). Analysis of application data cycles correlates the business process to the underlying system requirements. Hands-on experience in the largest, most complicated IT environments gives us the requisite technical expertise of the hard-ware, software and network infrastructures. And our broad recovery experience allows us to understand all of the available solutions for component recovery of mainframes, open systems, networks, applications and communications.
WTG’s unique ability to weigh component recovery options in the context of business process interactions connects the dots of the recovery architecture puzzle. The result is pragmatic business continuity solutions that balance protection and risk, and can offer infrastructure recoverability as an inherent part of business continuity to companies of all sizes.
…it’s about performance
Our approach to consulting is also different. WTG consultants are measured on customer satisfaction, not billable hours, and have a singular focus on performance. Our goal is to exceed your expectations on a continual basis. To do so, our consultants…
- have an average of 15 years direct, hands-on business continuity experience
- are specifically recruited to offer more depth than the big firms and more breadth than the boutiques
- work with a limited number of clients at any time to devote the attention needed to understand your business from the inside out
- focus on client retention not acquisition
- address the most often overlooked and important aspect for the long term success of a continuity program… the managed roll-out
- actively seek architectures that leverage current spending to provide “free” synergistic benefits like production fail-over
- strive to pay for their fees through the savings our solutions return
- make recommendations based on business requirements, not the capabilities of the latest available software or hardware
In short, our approach makes the difference between well-intentioned promises and measurable performance.
…it’s about experience
None of our philosophy would be worth the paper it’s printed on without the credentials to back it up.
WTG earned ours in the field working with multinational companies on many of the largest continuity projects in the industry.
We created the first formal recovery planning methodology, which is the basis for most methodologies in the industry. We built and managed one of the world’s largest recovery facilities and developed the infrastructures and operating procedures used in the current generation of commercial hot sites. We originated and managed the largest contingency planning organization in the world and were integral in the development of the International recovery services market. We trained professional recovery organizations throughout the U.S., U.K., Canada and Europe and have conducted dozens of seminars on data center and open system recovery, communications recovery, continuous operations, vital records management, and business process analysis. And we designed and developed the industry’s first automated recovery planning software tool.
Over 25 years in the disaster recovery and business continuity fields means we can quickly and efficiently cut through the myriad of products, services and vendors in the marketplace to identify the right technologies to deploy in the right places at the right time. And we maintain strategic vendor alliances to ensure we stay on the leading edge and that you have the latest information and vertical support.
We understand the nuances of your business and get to the right solution… a solution based on needs dictated by the business, not by the products we offer.
…it’s about results
It’s absolutely critical to know that your consulting firm is looking out for your interests… so please, ask the hard questions.
Staying vendor-independent grants us the freedom to design best-of-breed solutions and more importantly, the motivation to ensure that they work. And our methodology guarantees that everything we do is driven by the needs of your business. We start in a fundamentally different place (business process) so that you end in a fundamentally different place (business continuity).
WTG’s cross-functional continuity architectures, orientation on business processes, and best-of-breed solutions have enabled our client’s to:
- reduce the cost of a $300K /mo. recovery architecture to $40K/mo. while gaining increased functionality
- relocate three pieces of backup hardware to achieve free, continuous production fail-over
- eliminate a $3 million dollar capital expense for a hardened data center by simply introducing the business requirements of one overlooked remote site into the continuity equation
- discover a fundamental flaw in a vital records program that would have completely disabled chances of recovery… after the capability had already been actively tested for over five years
- trace the business flow of an entire industry, which enabled the first industry-wide recovery architecture discussions
- consolidate 30 production data centers into 10 with a single recovery site
When it comes to business continuity, there are three kinds of companies: those who are looking for recovery or continuity in name, not in fact; those who have the expertise to know exactly what they need and simply want the infrastructure to implement; and those who sincerely view continuity as a fundamental business objective and require the biggest bang for their “continuity buck”.
For those of you who fall into the last category, these results should speak for themselves.
…it’s about you
Whether you need to implement a flexible continuity solution from scratch, fine-tune your current capability, or expand to the next level of preparedness… our only business is to help you get there.
We’ve specifically designed our methodologies to function in today’s context of cost containment and limited resources and to establish your business continuity capability more effectively and less expensively than any other vendor in the industry.
When you need help with any of the common continuity issues: vendor selection, business impact analysis, recovery architectures, plan development, vital records or testing… be it for disaster recovery or full-blown business continuity, let our experience be your expertise.
Remember, there is a better way that produces a superior solution for less.
Less time.
Less cost.
Less exposure.
Less frustration.
And less risk.