CDW White Paper Sample

After a disaster, the sooner you can get your business running again, the better. The phrase “as soon as possible” is bound to enter any conversation about disaster recovery.

Though it may be tempting to use this phrase as your guiding principle, it sets an unclear, unrealistic goal that can only undermine your disaster recovery plan. That is why defining a recovery time objective (RTO) is so important.

This simple measurement can help you pinpoint your company’s threshold of tolerance for downtime — the moment at which downtime begins to have unacceptable negative effects. For example, you may need to restore a mission-critical sales order processing system within the fi rst hour after downtime strikes to avoid delays in order fulfillment or cancellations from customers. Downtime for your payroll system, on the other hand, presents a less dire situation — one that can be corrected over the course of a few days or a week. Your business will naturally assign different RTOs to different business functions — which is good, because it will help you prioritize your recovery procedures.