Overview disasters

When a power cut takes out a merchant bank’s dealing room, business-critical employees are moved as quickly as possible to the COIN recovery location. Normal activities can be continued almost uninterrupted at the dedicated work stations, where Bloomberg dealing room positions are always kept operational.

An organisation’s network collapses. Despite this client having a twin data centre in place, it turns out the premises’ external network is not fully duplicated. The client moves over to COIN, as part of which the offices’ phone lines and Contact Centre are also switched across, enabling the client to be operational again within 1.5 hours and reachable by its customers.

A multinational moves into new premises, where 3 weeks later fire breaks out in the power supply. All data, telephone and power cables need replacing. It will be several weeks before the multinational can move back into their new premises. In the meantime work goes on from the recovery location.

A foreign organisation is taken on to deliver business continuity for the Dutch supervisory authority. COIN consultants are called in to identify those processes and resources - IT, telephony etc. – that are business critical. An external auditor compiles the report for the first recovery test, following which this organisation complies with the set requirements and guidelines.

At the office where the annual accounts were being drawn up, the sprinkler system starts deluging water . Employees run from the building, but cannot prevent the documentation in the open filing cabinets becoming drenched, together with the bookkeeping on the desks. Before the mains shut-down valve can be located the entire floor is sodden. COIN collected all the wet documentation, storing it in a special way to prevent further damage. It’s two months before the client can return to their own location, during which all work continues at the COIN recovery location where the organisation is reachable on its normal telephone numbers. In the meantime the documentation was dried and returned. The annual accounts could be finished (just) in time for publication to the stock market.