I thought I would provide a summary of my thinking and writing so far, both to serve as a guide for new visitors, and to set up the next step of developing my own thinking on the subject.
Probably the best point to start with is the series of literature reviews on Resilience (see this archive Resilience Research). The significant posts relate to;
- Resilient Organisations (University of Canterbury, NZ)
- asserts that resilience is not something you do, but something you are
- resilience needs to recognize that we operate in a complex, dynamic and interconnected environment
- provides a multi-dimensional model and indicators
- High Reliability Management
- Introduces a concept called “mindfulness” – the key to a High Reliability Organisation (HRO)
- 5 Principles of a HRO – split into “Anticipation” and “Containment” modes
- Highlights that how we conduct day-to-day business is a key to how we operate in adverse situations.
- Centre for Resilience (Ohio State University)
- Presents a model of resilience mapped against the dimensions of Strategic/Tactical and Functional/Structural
- The Strategic purpose is to build robustness
- The Tactical layer needs to demonstrate functional agility
- Introduce the concepts of the Adaptive Organisation (Sense,Respond)
- 4R Framework (MCEER, State University of New York)
- Defines resilience by three outcomes – reduced probability and consequence of failure, reduced time to restore.
- 4 Characteristics of resilience – Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness and Rapidity
- Rapidity is a function of the other three.
- NZ Resilience Trust
- the opposite of being resilient is being vulnerable
- focussed on communities and building these capabilities in the community
- highlights that this aspect needs to be built bottom up.
There has been a series of posts on Contemporary BC Practice – which essentially set up the concept that the tired and dated practices of DR Planning are still practiced by many, just being branded as BC Management. Focus on the artefact rather than the management and not looking at contemporary thinking in related areas such as knowledge management would be part of this “Heritage” practice of BC.
Resilience may turn out be nothing more than BCM done properly. This post about new directions in BC generated more discussion than most.
Finally I started to clarify and share my own position on the subject in this category of posts. The focus is on building capability rather than meeting compliance requirements – and the need to address the domains of People, Process and Technology.
That is my story so far – it does not cover every single post, hopefully if you are interested you will browse the rest. Tomorrow I will build on my initial foundation thinking post (at long last).
My challenge to the reader today. Write a comment – Pose the single, most important question/issue in your mind on the subject of BC/Resilience.
- What is your burning issue or question?
- What area of thinking and action will make a significant improvement in your program in 2010?
Are Windows server versions as resilient as other platforms ? (Im sure you expected this one from me when you sent the invitation to comment 🙂
Examining the points raised, they talk of “Mindfulness” and environmental awareness – Windows considers itself the be all and end all and doesn't make any attempt to interoperate with non-Windows environments. They talk of Reliability and Robustness – Windows is the most rebooted and easiest to break/most often broken platform currently in use. They mention “Vulnerablitity” as the opposite to resilience – Windows has more Vulnerabilities, Malware and Viruses than any other platform. They also mention functional agility – Windows is very stodgy and set in its ways, you usually dont have a choice but to do things the way Microsoft have thought of. An additional Characteristic that hasnt been mentioned is scalability – more commonly than not, Windows applications become unusable when they cant scale to meet an increasing workload and achieve acceptable performance (regardless of how much extra hardware and money you throw at it).
Resilience is a synonym for Enterprise Ready – its sad that some people think that Windows servers are Enterprise Ready.
Windows is often deployed for Enterprise applications because it is perceived as cheap to deploy, however it is almost as often found that the solution becomes more expensive than alternatives for larger workloads. Be careful when you aim for mediocrity as it is not the same as resilience. Note also that resilience and pervasiveness are two different things.
Hi Wayne, thanks for dropping by and commenting.
The overall purpose of the discussions here are to explore how the concept of resilience is applied to organisations, their People, Process and Technology. Not just the technology.
In general the choice of hardware and operating system is not the level at which an entity would look to assess their level of resilience. From a technology perspective we would be concerned that there is appropriate levels of investment in availability and properly designed redundancy and service continuity.
I know that IBM promote that resilience is a product and you can order it from the price book – but it simply is not correct.
Try this post http://www.blog.vrg.net.au/continuityresilience… which talks about another company offering to sell resilience. Or this one http://www.blog.vrg.net.au/bc-practice/how-ofte…
Vendors do not sell solutions, only products and services. The client has to create the solution to the problem themselves.
Glad to hear you are still out there.