Stop for a moment! Imagine the building where your company’s data center is located, with all the servers, storage, and databases. Now, imagine that you have received information that it is about to be destroyed. Are you prepared for a fire?
What would you, as an IT manager or business owner, say to be accountable for the primary and most valuable asset you possess, which is the data and information contained in these devices?
Well, on December 21, 2015, we all witnessed a disastrous fire that completely destroyed the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo.
In this real case, it was not difficult for the IT manager or senior management to be accountable for their greatest assets. But I’ll tell you more about that later.
When we study ITIL, we come across two processes within Service Design that help us understand and believe that when applied properly, we can generate excellent results.
I’m talking about Availability Management, which focuses on ensuring that the level of availability delivered in all IT services effectively meets the agreed-upon availability needs of the business, and IT Service Continuity Management, which focuses on ensuring that the business continues to operate even after a service interruption.
Benefits and values
Let’s take a look at the benefits and values ​​achieved by the business when properly supported by IT:
- Guarantee of regulatory and legislative compliance;
- Guarantee of appropriate levels of protection over all IT and information assets;
- Alignment of IT service provision with business goals and objectives;
- Prioritization of all IT activities based on impact and urgency, ensuring that critical business processes and services receive greater attention;
- Increased business productivity and profitability through increased efficiency and effectiveness of IT processes;
- Support for corporate governance requirements with IT governance and controls;
- Create a competitive advantage through the exploration and innovation of IT infrastructure as a whole.
So, do you remember when we talked about how the IT manager and senior management of the Museum of the Portuguese Language had no trouble being accountable for their greatest assets?
Let’s see why in the words of reporter José Roberto Burnier: “Thanks to a fireproof door in the museum’s technology room, the entire digital collection was saved. The computers are there, and the museum’s entire collection remains intact. That’s why all the authorities, the museum director, the curator, said that once the building is recovered, recovering the facilities will not be difficult.”
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