The History of Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery actually came into play in the late 1970s when computer center managers finally began to recognize that their organizations were extremely dependent upon the use of their computer systems. Mortgage Orb has a detailed article that walks through the entire evolution of both disaster recovery and business continuity. Before organizations began to move to mainframe computer systems, organizations relied heavily on paper – based operations. Because they relied mostly on paper – based operations and filing techniques, there wasn't a huge concern toward technology infrastructure outings.
However, the computer age is now upon us. As it came closer, the need to have a clear cut plan in the face of technological failure became a necessity for the organization. Over time more and more business began to host their operations on mainframe systems; moving away from the safety of paper – based systems. Computers aren't without their advantages, however, and the offer of increased productivity, organization, and being able to instantly find critical data was essential to keeping up with the times and growing the organization. Moving to the technological instead of paper, however, also opened the door for more potential disasters to take effect.
Employees began to express their concerns that if the mainframe system were to go down for a day or two, they would be unable to access the files and applications now essential to conducting everyday business. The first hot site was developed by SunGard Information Systems in 1978 for an organization located in Philadelphia.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, both customer awareness and the industry itself began to grow rapidly due to the advent of open systems and real-time processing. Open systems and real-time processing increased the amount an organization depends on their IT systems. Regulations that mandated both business continuity and disaster recovery planning in multiple sectors of the economy not only increased the demand but led to the availability of commercial disaster recovery services, like the ones offered by Virtacore.
Since the 1990s, there has been a rapid growth in the internet. This rapid growth lead to organizations of all sizes becoming further dependent on the continuous availability of their IT systems. Some organizations even set objectives at 2,3,4, or 5 nines (99.99%) of the availability of their critical systems in the event of a disaster. The increasing dependence on IT systems combined with the increase in awareness from large-scale disasters (volcanic eruption, tsunami, floods, tornadoes, etc.) lead to disaster recovery related products and services. These products and services range from hot site locations to high-availability solutions. Hot site locations are a facility that is equipped with the necessary infrastructure to operate an organization if the current site is unavailable. The improvement of networking meant that critical IT services could be served remotely, and lead to the decrease in importance to on-site recovery options.
