12-31-14 | Blog Post
“Our job as providers is not telling them what they need, but rather listening to the customer’s needs” – Lance Thompson
In preparation for our Indianapolis and Metro Detroit business continuity and disaster recovery workshops, I spoke with Lance Thompson, founder and president of Baseline Data Services about what we can expect from his session, Real Life Disaster Recovery: Precious Vicarious Lessons. He shared some BCDR wisdom that was too good not to pass on.
As highlighted in the quote above, disaster recovery plans are not a one size fits all solution. Lance explains that when he’s helping to create a backup and recovery solution, there are certain things to be listening for, like RTO (Recovery Time Objective, which refers to how quickly the system would need to be back up and running) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective, which helps him to understand how often the data needs to be backed up). Lance noted that this information should be different application to application, so you’ll want to think of them individually instead of as one company-wide objective.
Another huge topic Lance will be touching on during the workshops is understanding what your environment looks like. In his 30+ years as an IT professional, he’s encountered lots of people who don’t know how many servers they have, what operating system they’re using, how much disk space they have, and so on. “Lots of people go headlong into DR without knowing exactly what they have. It’s not good, because there are tons of backup products, but it’s really all about recovery. You only backup because you’re expecting to recover.”
Lastly, Lance will be speaking about different products and how to find the right technology to suit your company’s backup needs. Self-proclaimed “product agnostic”, Lance explains they have many different products they use, in order to provide the right solution for each client. It’s not just the product that makes the solution, though. People are another really important aspect in implementing a solid disaster recovery plan.
To hear more about Lance Thompson’s disaster recovery advice, sign up for one of our business continuity and disaster recovery workshops. The Indianapolis event will be on January 22nd, and the Metro Detroit workshop will be February 19th. Sign up now, as availability is limited to the first 50 people.
About Lance Thompson
Lance Thompson is the founder and President of Baseline Data Services with 30 years of business experience within the IT marketplace.
Starting his career with IBM in the late 70s, Lance went on to start, develop and grow multiple companies supplying computer hardware, software, bank operations services, disaster recovery services and more.
Today, those successful experiences have culminated into a large client base of satisfied customers, an extraordinary team of engineers and a 100% recovery success rate.
