Contingency Planning & Management

Inductees - Vendor Category

Vendor Category
companies and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the business continuity planning field

2005: TAMP Computer Systems
2004: Simpler Life Emergency Provisions
2003: Iron Mountain
2002: SunGard Availability Services
2001: Strohl Systems
2000: AT&T
1999: IBM
1998: Comdisco

TAMP Computer Systems Inc., provides planning software and consulting for business continuity, offering the Disaster Recovery System (DRSTM) planning tool. TAMP has been helping companies, large and small, enhance their current plans and create new, comprehensive plans for more than 20 years.

Tom Abruzzo, president and founder of TAMP Computer Systems, has been specializing in contingency planning since 1977. He has authored numerous published articles, as well as the book, Recovering Your Business. As an outgrowth of business continuity planning projects for clients, Abruzzo was the original developer of the first version of the DRSTM in 1985. Today, the Web version of DRSTM creates and keeps business continuity plans current through secure, online access to planning data. Recently, Abruzzo was featured in the Disaster Resource Guide’s “Meet the Pros” and he was elected chairperson of the Long Island Chapter of the Contingency Planning Exchange. He also served on Contingency Planning Management’s Editorial Advisory Board. During the past 28 years, Abruzzo has provided dozens of companies and practitioners with continuity strategies and plans. Currently, he manages TAMP’s consulting practice, which typically results in updates to DRS.

Bob Snedaker is president and founder of Simpler Life Emergency Provisions Inc., which has, since 1981, provided a broad range of first responder tools, supplies and other assets and a large selection of personal emergency management products and services. In the formative years of Simpler Life, Snedaker taught classes on self-sufficiency, preparedness and food storage, while his wife, Crystal, taught families to prepare and use their storage foods. In the mid 1980s, with the increase of earthquakes, hurricanes and other disasters, the business expanded beyond food to a full line of products including water, cots, blankets and custom emergency kits.

Iron Mountain has been protecting business records since 1951. It has responded to over 156 actual disaster events to date and operates over 50 dedicated data protection facilities in the United States. These sites are staffed with more than 1,200 trained professionals supplemented by a resource network that includes a 400-vehicle fleet and priority access to 90 aircraft available for immediate charter.

SunGard Availability Services is a leading provider of information availability services, helping to ensure that more than 8000 clients in North America and Europe have uninterrupted access to their business-critical information systems. With over 2 million square feet of hardened facilities, they offer a complete range of information availability services for more than 30 technology platforms, from 48-hour disaster recovery hot sites to always-on, high-availability infrastructure, co-location, and electronic vaulting services. SunGard also provides technology and systems management services for application and data center outsourcing, as well as business continuity consulting services and planning software.

Strohl Systems, the global leader in continuity planning software and services, consistently provides leading-edge BCP software, consulting, and education solutions. For years, Strohl Systems has contributed expertise and advice to thousands of clients worldwide.

From more intuitive software to an increased reliance on technology, the business continuity industry has seen great changes over the last decade. All along, Strohl Systems has led as a marked innovator. From its Web-based software to its world-class education and consulting services, Strohl Systems has proven its contribution to progress. Most recently, Strohl Systems marked yet another industry first by offering the industry's first online training classes. And with the launch of its PLANet division last year, Strohl Systems introduced the world's first online planning tool for community banks, credit unions, and schools.

Strohl products and services help protect billions of global-market dollars every day. While Strohl Systems has many Fortune 500 customers, the company cares about businesses great and small and offers scalable solutions affordable to most any business.

"Customers come first" is Strohl Systems' mantra, and Strohl customer support is legendary. With a 24x7 help desk, online support, training programs, an annual International User Group Conference, and regional user group meetings year-round, Strohl delivers on customer service promises.

Strohl Systems also prides itself on being a proactive and responsible member of the global community. Strohl Systems donates software to FEMA for use in Project Impact communities and supports employees who wish to give their time and expertise in order to further the BCP message.

AT&T Global Data Communications offers business continuity strategies for frame relay and private line networks.

A dynamic work environment means bandwidth requirements change frequently. Customers who use the AT&T T1 and Single Channel Services can gain greater control and use on their wide area network with AT&T Bandwidth Manager (ABM). An advanced network management tool with friendly graphical user interfaces and screens, ABM helps users reconfigure their network, schedule temporary facilities and routes, and monitor the health of their wide area network. The result is increased flexibility in a cost-effective solution plus the added security people have come to expect from AT&T.

With ABM, customers can:

• Increase wide area network use to meet their needs for dynamic near real-time routing and bandwidth changes
• Boost maximum network up-time by monitoring, isolating, and resolving troubles
• Exercise business continuity and recovery plans during both testing periods and disasters
• Reroute access circuits for AT&T Frame Relay Service when failures occur at the primary data center site
  Based on their intimate knowledge of specific customer application needs and traffic patterns, AT&T experts can help design a customized business continuity plan for customer networks. The AT&T team also will engineer connectivity requirements to Disaster Recovery Vendors (DRVs). Then, trained technicians will install and test the solution from end-to-end.

IBM Business Recovery Services (BRS) provides high quality professional service. The company delivers on time what it has committed to and will go above and beyond the call of duty to help resolve any and all problems. Our business has been a client of IBM BRS for four years, and I have continued to be surprised by the level of commitment that they have demonstrated, not only in fulfilling the letter of the contracts, but also in working with us to reduce cost while increasing our overall abilities to recover different platforms. IBM BRS also provides global coverage for all of our international companies.

IBM BRS is a vendor who is truly a business partner in the area of business recovery. The quality, breadth, and depth of its team is second to none. It has extensive industry-specific expertise acquired over many years from working with both small and large companies. This skill base is one of the main reasons IBM is able to provide such a comprehensive level of breadth and security.

IBM's wide range of hardware and support personnel is better than any of its competitors. IBM has 113 recovery centers and local access centers around the globe, more than any other provider both in the U.S. and worldwide. In the U.S., IBM has three major recovery centers in Sterling Forest, NY; Gaithersburg, MD; and Boulder, CO; with 17 regional centers and numerous mobile suites. IBM also provides specialized centers to support the RS/6000 SP/2, Tandem, Unisys, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corp., SUN, and most recently, has opened a new state-of-the-art recovery center for AS/400 recovery in Rochester, MN, this past April. IBM's ability to rapidly meet companies' ever-changing needs is truly an asset.

Their wide range and quantity of hardware assures that there is always capacity available in the event of regional disasters, like the recent Hurricane Georges in September, during which time IBM supported the largest number (31) of concurrent customers requiring recovery services in the history of the industry. As the financial services industry's ability to recover in a timely manner is crucial, IBM is the vendor of choice based on their abilities.
IBM BRS has over 250 consultants in 64 countries and has successfully completed over 2000 consulting engagements worldwide. Its proven methodologies are now being focused on helping clients with Year 2000 contingency planning, advanced availability, and e-business solutions recovery. IBM also has business partners who are technology specialists in their chosen markets. Their industry-specific expertise allows IBM to extend the service it provides to include details appropriate to a number of niche areas. The business partners are well-versed in particular fields of IBM-developed hardware and software and niche recovery, and offer their own value-added services and skills, which further extend the vast capability offered by IBM.

The effect of all of these resources means that any company's recovery program can be greatly enhanced by working with IBM. Behind each recovery plan lies a pyramid of support -- starting with your own service manager who employs local and international BRS resources, as well as linking in to the wider IBM and complementary service partners. My company utilized IBM's consulting services to totally reengineer our operating systems recovery, reducing our recovery time by over 50 percent.

IBM Business Recovery Services encompasses international as well as local U.S. experience and includes a high level of industry-specific expertise acquired over many years of dealing with both small and large businesses. This skill base, which adds up to nearly 4500 person-year's worth of experience, is one of the main reasons IBM BRS is able to provide such a comprehensive level of breadth and security.

In addition to the demands of external accreditors, IBM operates its own additional quality procedures - for example, the annual certification process. This year's annual customer satisfaction double blind survey rated IBM a full six points ahead of its competitors.

IBM BRS is well represented by many IBM sales reps and Business Partner firms with specialties in certain types of business, governments, and other organizations. This helps the client to be comfortable that the BRS offering will be tailored to their exact requirements.

Adhering to the highest industry standards, IBM BRS is the first and only vendor to be designated ISO 9001 compliant. This is an internationally known quality system that recognizes outstanding consistency and quality of processes and methodology. Furthermore, the business is fully accredited by the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) and a number of its staff have maintained fellowship or full membership status with the Institute.

IBM also offers flexible terms and conditions that respond to dynamic and changing business environments, as well as unique industry requirements, which has helped more than 350 customers in the U.S. and abroad be successfully supported and recovered from disasters. At my company we feel that IBM cares as much about our ability to recover as we do, and will do whatever it takes for us to be successful. What more can be asked of a recovery services vendor? Based on customer satisfaction and the above summary of information, I would like to nominate IBM BRS for the 1999 CPM Hall of Fame.

All organizations rely on technology for everyday business operations. Comdisco provides these organizations with a competitive edge to assist them in remaining operational even under adverse conditions. Comdisco's operations staff, who have supported nearly 300 recoveries and 32,000 recovery plan tests, are the most experienced and professional in the industry. They always put the needs of customers first, and are receptive and flexible to changes, even those made on the fly.

It's this emphasis on customer needs that qualifies Comdisco for an industry Hall of Fame. The company goes far beyond technology to understand the business needs of my company, including the personal and comfort needs of my workforce in a testing or recovery scenario, and my ongoing continuity needs, stressing prevention, protection, and planning.

Comdisco urges customers to look at potential exposures throughout an organization's enterprise. They've been there, shoulder-to-shoulder with me and most of their customers -- from my board room, to demonstrate return on investment to executive management, to the "war room," during a recovery, for status and progress reports, and to ensure we meet our RPO and RTOs.

Their consulting staff offers strategic resources such as impact and vulnerability analysis, plan building, an impressive array of software tools based on their methodologies, and even offers complete program management services. No matter where an organization is with its continuity program, all companies can utilize the metrics and measurement systems Comdisco has devised – who isn't asked to prove the bottom line value of business continuity?

Comdisco works closely with each of its customers to help them maximize the business benefits of technology. This often involves more than "traditional" business continuity. One of Comdisco's strengths is its understanding of asset management. Knowing the location and disposition of an organization's desktop assets is an important aspect of business continuity. If a fire or an equally devastating event prohibited access to or destroyed a building, how could you replace your assets if you don't know what they were, where they were, how they were used, or what software resided on them?

Additionally, Comdisco has long been a proponent of the importance of networks in business continuity. Having their own SONET-based network is a tremendous boon to our recovery efforts. Network protection and continuity plans go hand-in-hand with enterprise recovery, something Comdisco has stressed since the 80s.

One of the measures of an excellent organization is in how it furthers the industry through innovation. Comdisco's pioneering spirit and contributions to the industry are great in number and weighty in impact. Here are some of the industry firsts that Comdisco ushered in:

• Electronic vaulting (1988)
• A complete line of in-house consulting services
• Workarea Recovery Solutions
• CDRS Net (now CCSNET) a private, high-speed telecomm network for recovery (1989)
• VSAT satellite communications capabilities
• Dedicated recovery capabilities in Canada, Europe, Singapore, and Malaysia
• Remote testing (1987)
• LAN recovery (1987)
• Voice recovery capabilities
• Vulnerability Index – biannual, in-depth research commissioned by Comdisco
• Item processing/check sorting recovery services
• Mobile Recovery – Comdisco Mobile Operations Recovery Center (1988)
• Year 2000 testing services
• Self-contained mobile recovery with up to 10,000 square feet of continuous floor space

Comdisco has a passion for this business. They actively participate with testing and trials with alliance partners to make recovery better, faster. Examples include trialing AT&T's ATM closed-loop congestion management system, testing Cisco's Channel Interface Processor, and benchmarking EMC's Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF). In 1994, Comdisco announced its "Project 2000," representing $300 million in investments through Year 2000 to serve its customers' evolving business continuity needs across all platforms. Their annual "Solutions" technology conference is unique within the industry. All of this points to both Comdisco's leadership and its commitment to its customers.

Disasters happen. They've happened in my organization. So I speak from experience when I tell you that Comdisco's technical experts really understand each customer's unique requirements and quirks, and there are never any surprises. The level of support in a disaster recovery is stellar. Comdisco is a first-class organization and an industry leader.