White Paper
Guidelines for
Maintaining Business
Continuity for Your
Organization
Protect your business from disruptions and keep your
workforce productive.
Every organization faces the possibility of disruptions. Citrix mobile
workspace technology helps you keep the business running no matter what.
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White Paper
Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Business continuity planning is essential to keep people
productive during planned or unplanned disruptions and protect
with technologies and best practices to ensure seamless
operations no matter what happens.
Disruptions are often inevitable—but they don’t have to damage your business. Citrix® mobile
Addressing the business continuity imperative
While business continuity planning has traditionally focused on failover and disaster recovery for
This paper presents an approach to business continuity based on mobile workspace technology
•
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can remain productive during any kind of business disruption
• Real-world examples of four companies that have already implemented highly effective business
continuity strategies based on remote access
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
The importance of business continuity—and the challenges it poses
interrupted work in progress and the loss collaborative cohesion with teammates and
management—not to mention the personal impact the event may have had on them.
“Business continuity is absolutely a
strategic function for any
organization, and it has to be
treated as such. Without an
effective business resumption
strategy, the organization is at
constant risk of having its
competitive position and market
• Bringing the datacenter back online and restoring any lost data
• Replacing lost or inaccessible devices and ensuring that each can run the user’s required software
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•
access methods to workarounds for applications which can no longer be accessed
•
success undermined. Executive
leadership needs to make sure that
people throughout the organization
restore and maintain service to the organization while getting people back to work as quickly as
can give this vital function the time
and attention it demands.”
Stan Black
A global approach for your business continuity strategy
business continuity plan provides a framework and preparation to guide these decisions as well as
a clear indication of who will make them. Successful business continuity programs require
executives must play an active role in the development of this plan and ensure buy-in from the rest
position and market success undermined. Executive leadership needs to make sure that people
throughout the organization can give this vital function the time and attention it demands.” With
continuity strategy that encompasses all of the following essential elements.
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White Paper
Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Business
Continuity
Team
Structure
Employee
Safety and
Awareness
Programs
Citrix Standard
of Business
Continuity
Business
Continuity
Plans
Crisis
Communications
Disaster
Recover and
BC Testing
Team structure
One of the top considerations for a business continuity plan is the development of a clear
responsibility or authority to make a given decision.
The organization should be able to address all business continuity tasks in every location in which it
local and broader-based emergencies. Key members of the business continuity team must remain
involved in planning and testing throughout the year to ensure that the plan is effective and up-to-
•
•
service agencies and customers
• Campus response – prepares property and equipment for the impending disaster event;
performs post-event assessment of damage and its impact on continuing operations; assists
with insurance claims; secures buildings and grounds
• Business readiness – acts as a liaison with individual business unit teams; makes arrangements
to implement disaster business operations for each unit; provides a tactical response and
business direction
Each of these teams reports into the Citrix executive management committee.
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White Paper
Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Business continuity planning
active region or civil unrest in politically unstable areas. Planning extends throughout the supply
potential risks of operational outages and evaluating alternatives. To keep the number of scenarios
versions of each incident.
“Our success rate has been
It won’t always be possible to maintain normal operations in an emergency situation. To mitigate
phenomenal on both the disaster
recovery side and the business
unit side. Still, no matter how
of business unit owners with a business continuity analyst. This group works together to rank the
many times we go through the
business continuity process—real
something we can add or improve
to make it better and smoother.”
John Lugo
applications will be available to the business within an established recovery time objective (RTO)
and recovery point objective (RPO).
Citrix
Testing
sense of security.
changes throughout the year to supplement this annual review. Full emergency simulations should
be conducted at least annually as well. These guidelines should be considered the minimum; in
quarterly business continuity and recoverability testing for all mission-critical applications. Tabletop
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Crisis communications
organization’s communications toolkit should include internal and external resources such as
team should work to convey a consistent message on the company’s behalf via external channels
Employee safety
Keeping people safe should be the top priority in any emergency response. There are many ways
regularly with all employees. Emergency evacuation procedures should be reviewed and tested
Business Continuity Planning Checklist
Business continuity
team structure
• Secure executive buy-in
• Form core business continuity team
Business continuity
planning
• Create business analysis team
• Develop disaster scenarios
• Prioritize recovery per business considerations
• Map recovery goals to dependencies
• Develop datacenter continuity strategy
• Develop workforce continuity strategy
Disaster recover/
business continuity
testing
• Update plans regularly*
• Test recoverability of mission-critical applications*
• Perform tabletop exercises and walkthroughs*
Crisis communications
• Establish formal crisis communication program
• Identify stakeholders for emergency communications
• Identify key internal communications channels
• Draft sample communications
Employee safety and
awareness programs
• Develop programs through tabletop exercises and emergency response training by local agencies
• Incorporate safety and awareness into new employee orientation
• Review and test emergency evacuation procedures
*
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Workforce continuity: enabling uninterrupted access to business resources
Datacenter continuity can keep IT operations up and running—but what if people have been
business can’t function.”
While business continuity has traditionally revolved around a designated alternate workplace or
without the need for special infrastructure or complex connectivity.
“A complete and effective business
continuity program has to
services in both routine operations and emergency situations. This makes it simple for people to
encompass not only the datacenter,
but the workforce as well. Simply
put, if people can’t do their jobs, the
business can’t function.”
Stan Black
people through a long list of changed processes.”
Making mobility and remote access core elements of business
continuity planning lets you increase the value of these investments while eliminating many
separate business continuity processes and costs.
Because people access and use their resources the same way
delivered to people’s devices is secured and controlled through mobile device management
Organizations can invoke their business continuity plan
to have people work at home during an epidemic—rather than taking its chances and hoping the
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White Paper
Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
disaster will pass without impacting the business. The plan becomes much more effective when it
is seen as an acceptable adjustment to circumstances rather than a last resort to be invoked only in
“We’ve relocated people to hotel
conference rooms, shifted our
workload around the world based
on facilities closing, rapidly
increased capacity in other areas
in Florida. The service we provide both internally and externally to our customers has never been
based on potential disasters—
we’ve done it all many times,
especially when it’s hurricane
season in Florida. The service we
provide both internally and
Ensuring workforce continuity with Citrix technologies
Citrix mobile workspace technology helps organizations ensure continuity of operations during
business disruptions. The industry-leading Citrix Workspace Suite™ enables IT to securely deliver all
externally to our customers has
never been affected. It’s a real
network. Key elements of the suite to support business continuity include the following.
enabled by our technology.”
John Lugo
Displaced workers who have lost access to their usual work device can access their mobile
Citrix
powered by Citrix NetScaler Gateway™
support compliance and data protection.
powered by Citrix XenMobile®
de-provisioning and selective wipe of any devices that have been used temporarily during a
®
IT
powered by Citrix XenDesktop®
can transform Windows apps and complete desktops into on-demand services delivered to mobile
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
powered by Citrix ShareFile®
content secure when business disruptions occur.
®
and Citrix
people work together more effectively when business disruptions keep them apart. IT can centrally
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Datacenter continuity: maintaining continuous IT operations
Most large organizations already have more than one datacenter for scale and redundancy. If one
comes back online. It’s important to make sure that the associated infrastructure can support this
powered by Citrix XenServer®
Citrix business continuity solutions help IT ensure that datacenter resources remain available. Citrix
redistributes virtual machines from a failed host to other physical hosts and restarts them to
protect critical workloads from localized events.
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White Paper
Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
powered by Citrix NetScaler® and Citrix CloudBridge™
NetScaler redirects users automatically and transparently to the secondary site while continuing to
perform load balancing and global load balancing. NetScaler also allows organizations which use
a public cloud for backup to manage this outsourced infrastructure the same way they would their
bandwidth utilization across third-party public cloud and private networks and gain visibility into
application performance to optimize the user experience in any scenario.
“While high water had forced us to
Four customers maintain business continuity with remote access powered by Citrix
shut down our power, we needed
to be able to access charts and
information for people who came
in with emergencies.”
innovative solutions that improve health and enhance the quality of life for patients. The hospital is
part of a three-hospital consortium sharing a healthcare IT infrastructure based on the concept of
right information is delivered to clinicians at the right time to achieve the best possible health
Magruder Hospital
Citrix for server-based session virtualization.
“If there’s a pandemic and everyone
is at home on whatever computer
is handy, we can deliver a desktop
securely over NetScaler Gateway
and allow them to function.”
Independent Bank
Independent Bank delivers secure access to remote users
VPN connection.
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
Gateway provides more robust data security to help meet regulatory requirements governing
and network environment.
desktop securely over NetScaler Gateway and allow them to function.” XenServer also plays a key
“Desktop virtualization represents
The City of High Point achieves cost-effective business continuity
the backbone of our disaster
recovery plan. Now our mobile
to many cities. While the city’s desktop virtualization initiative was primarily designed to decrease
employees have immediate
access to legacy applications
from wherever they are. Based on
the bandwidth this requires, we
could never have provided this to
them before.”
represents the backbone of our disaster recovery plan. Now our mobile employees have
immediate access to legacy applications from wherever they are. Based on the bandwidth this
High Point
home and work.”
“Desktop virtualization really
simplified our disaster recovery
strategy. Citrix provides a more
The ability to provide this capability without having to invest in and equip an alternate disaster
recovery site enables High Point to meet its business continuity planning goals and ensure
uninterrupted service for its constituents without additional strain on its budget.
comprehensive security solution,
because we’re not allowing users
Disaster recovery at CNL Financial Group
to actually put the content on the
device; it’s being accessed
through the virtual network.”
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Guidelines for Maintaining Business Continuity
The secure remote access capabilities of Citrix provide the security needed to protect CNL’s
Conclusion
The essence of business continuity is to minimize the impact of disruptions on people and the
the same time they’re coping with the stress and uncertainty of the event itself. Mobile workspace
business units stay productive. IT can protect and control business information accessed from any
continuity planning.
Many IT organizations are already intensely focused on business mobility. By incorporating mobile
more effectively against the risks posed by planned and unplanned disruptions.
trademarks of their respective companies
1014/PDF
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