IT responsible for half of UK business "disruptions"

IT and telecoms systems were responsible for almost half of UK business outages in the past year, according to a disaster recovery survey of Chartered Management Institute (CMI) members.

In the fifth annual business continuity management survey of almost 500 CMI members, IT and telecoms topped, by some way, the list of "events causing disruption" in 2003 at a combined 48 per cent.

But the survey also shows that organisations need a more holistic disaster recovery plan that looks beyond just the technology, with loss of people coming in close behind at 20 per cent and loss of skills at 14 per cent.

Karen Charlesworth, research manager at the CMI, told silicon.com "business isn't just about machines".

"Whilst these things are undeniably important businesses need to look behind that - things such as the loss of a key member of staff, or even a whole team," she said.

IT remains critical to the running of most businesses today, with any downtime having the potential to cripple or even ruin a company.

Stephen Beddow, marketing director at Colt Telecom – one of the sponsors of the report - said that many firms are putting all their efforts into backing up and protecting data and key systems but are forgetting about voice and communications.

That's perhaps not a surprising statement to hear from a telecoms company sponsoring the report. But Beddow said: "Firms need to have a balanced view – managing the real-time communications as well as making sure the data is not corrupted," he said.

Colt is responsible for the telephony disaster recovery and business continuity planning for insurance company Swiss Re's new 'gherkin' tower in London, which re-routes incoming calls to another site in the event of an outage.