SunGard Availability Services today released its sixth annual analysis of major causes of business disruption in the UK. The office is now firmly the main source of business disruption, with almost three times as many problems caused by workplace incidents such as power and communication failures than by technology failures involving hardware or other IT issues. Analysis of SunGard’s 2010 invocations log highlights the changing nature of business resilience, with a reduction in technology disruptions by almost half (46%) on 2009 figures.

Set against the drop in technology invocations is the substantial rise in communication failures (ie. disruptions relating to network or telephone outages), which is the second highest cause of disruption – topped only by power outages. In 2008, less than 2% of invocations were brought about because of communications – a figure that has risen substantially to 25% last year.

Commenting on the latest results, Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice-president Europe for SunGard Availability Services, said: “The percentage of business disruptions caused by communication failures has risen sharply for the second year in a row, which is a worrying trend. The adoption of smartphones and virtual desktop environments might provide users with available data around the clock, but there’s little point in having this if reliable, resilient network access cannot be guaranteed. In today’s economic environment, companies can ill afford for employees to be incommunicado for any period of time.”

One area of risk that does seem to have been addressed over the past year is data corruption. For the first time ever, SunGard found no invocations relating to this. Hardware failure, however, remains a considerable threat to organisations; despite being knocked from the number one position for the first time, hardware failure emerged as the third greatest cause of disaster declarations accounting for 23% of overall invocations.

Tilley continued: “Overall there were fewer invocations in total than in 2009, suggesting that the use of virtualised recovery and managed IT offerings as a means to ensuring business continuity is making a real difference to UK plc. As offerings continue to develop, businesses should continue to adhere to the mantra that ‘prevention is better than cure.’ Whilst having the capabilities in place to recover from disruption quickly and effectively is essential, the avoidance of needing to enter the recovery phase is always preferable. Organisations should bear this in mind when factoring predictable and unpredictable business disruptions into their operational and IT business strategies. Ultimately, snow, strikes or floods should no longer be excuses for a dip in productivity.”

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