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. And it means the difference between a cost-effective, risk-balanced solution and one costing more…sometimes millions more!