To ensure that a recovery capability addresses all of the business’ critical functions in the most cost- and operationally-effective manner requires that the recovery requirements are identified accurately. WTG has developed a proprietary approach for critical application analysis that defines mission-critical applications, second and third level interactions, upstream and downstream dependencies, recovery requisites, data integrity requirements, recovery sequences and solution architectures.
WTG’s approach is specifically designed to provide an accurate definition of critical systems, Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) quickly and for minimal cost via an interactive workshop technique. This approach ensures appropriate accuracy without negatively impacting the normal, daily responsibilities of your team. We believe that this is the Best Practice approach and represents the wisest use of your funds and resources. WTG’s experience confirms that the workshop effectively leverages your staff’s inherent knowledge of your business processes and application environment to produce a definition of critical applications suitable for solution modeling… usually in a four-hour workshop.
The workshop addresses two perspectives. The first will require participation of key technical and application representatives in order to develop a “bottoms up” view of critical applications. The “bottoms-up” view is intended to leverage the knowledge of the technical staff that supports the application on a day-to-day basis to produce a relative priority ranking which takes into account inter-application dependencies. The second perspective is the “top-down” view which will add the perspective of key business proponents and validates that the technical “bottoms-up” view accurately represents the perspective and needs of the business. The workshop also fosters a critical consensus between the two groups that no other method we have seen can duplicate.