Gen-i CEO, Chris Quin shares his pragmatic view on Business Continuity

The pragmatic reality is that small adverse events (like power failures) are far more likely than catastrophic events (like earthquakes) so your business continuity planning should carefully consider all the small things that can go wrong, says Gen-i CEO Chris Quin.

"Basically there is an inverse relationship between the scale of an adverse event and its likelihood. You have to prepare for the big disasters of course, but bear in mind that your BCP is more likely to be used on scores of smaller events before it is required for a big one," he says.

"I cannot emphasise enough the importance of testing to identify all the often unforeseeable details that in a real disaster could mean the difference between successful recovery and major delays.

"At Gen-i, for instance, during testing of our BCP we emptied the floors of our building to move people to another site – and in the process discovered the stairwells had no lighting in a power outage, which slowed things down considerably.

"A big hurdle we discovered during BCP testing is this: during a power outage, everyone switches to mobile devices to carry on business – but after four or five hours of talk time, how do you charge those devices?

"Unless you run through each scenario from end to end, you're not going to pick up those things."