BCP and Video Conferencing Solutions
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is the creation of processes that can control or eradicate the loss or potential loss of a disaster or other risks to a business. This is also known as business continuity or resilience planning. Risk management has become an intricate part of the business process. In addition to BCP, there is also DRP (Disaster recovery plan) which together provides organizations a comprehensive risk management system. BCP and DRP is incorporated into certain industries’ organizational cultures, where a single day of downtime means millions of dollars in lost profits (e.g.: Oil and Gas / Banking sector). By forming this integration into the culture, business continuity becomes second nature to individuals and everyone understands their role in the larger process.
Video conferencing plays an imperative part in many of the BCP scenarios. For example if there is an epidemic (e.g. - SARS), natural disaster (e.g. – Floods, Typhoons) or an unforeseeable event such as a building fire, video conferencing solutions substitutes the need for individuals to work and risk life or limb. By using VPN (Virtual Private Networks) or even their home broadband services, individuals can collaborate to ensure that tough decisions are made, to continue critical business processes. The use of RMX (Collaboration servers), DMA (Distributed management applications) and other collaborative infrastructure solutions, ensures that the relevant end-points are connected and synergy can transpire with minimal disruption. The transition to cloud-based solutions provides even more security, since the hardware is at the service provider’s site and they ensure service continuity in the Service Level Agreements (SLA) with their customers (Transfer of Risks).
The importance of collaboration will increase with time. Organizations have realized that competitive advantage can be gained through better decisions made through synergy - which means connecting people from different parts of the world onto one platform. With the emphasis placed on business continuity the need for comprehensive BCP plans will increase as well, this inevitably will increase the demand for reliable collaborative solutions. The future for collaboration systems looks bright..!!
