A Component-based Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Framework

IT solutions must be protected so that the business can continue, even in the case of fatal failures associated with disasters. Business continuity in the context of disaster implies that business cannot continue in the current environment but instead must continue at an alternate site or data center. However, the BC/DR concept today is too fragmented, as many different frameworks and methodologies exist. Furthermore,many of the application-specific solutions are provided and promoted by software vendors, while hardware vendors provide solutions for their hardware environments. Nevertheless, there are concerns that BC/DR solutions often do not connect to the technical components that are in the lower layers, which function as the foundationfor any such solutions; hence, it is equally important to connect and map the requirements accordingly. Moreover, a shift in the hardware environment, such as cloud computing, as well as changes in operations management, such as outsourcing,add complexity that must be captured by a BC/DR solution. Furthermore, the integrated nature of IT-based business solutions also presents new challenges, as it isno longer one IT solution that must be protected but also other IT solutions that are integrated to deliver an individual business process. Thus, it will be difficult to employa current BC/DR approach. Hence, the purpose of this thesis project is to design, develop, and present a novel way of addressing the BC/DR gaps, while supporting the requirements of a dynamic IT environment. The solution reuses most elements fromthe existing standards and solutions. However, it also includes new elements to capture and present the technical solution; hence, the complete solution is designatedas a framework. The new framework can support many IT solutions since it will havea modular approach, and it is flexible, scalable, and platform and application independent, while addressing the solution on a component level. The new framework is applied to two application scenarios at the stakeholder site, and theresults are studied and presented in this thesis