RBS could have been smelling of roses

IT departments need a good backup strategy, effective software control and disaster recovery processes coupled with a business continuity plan (Computing says: RBS saga is a warning to all enterprises). Then even if they mess up their upgrades or their pre-release testing it will always be possible to roll back and catch up with minimal disruption to the service.

I was involved in a similar situation a few years ago when working with an international blue chip company during a major hardware failure, yet by taking early action and invoking the above processes business was able to continue with a limited service while the fault was rectified.There was no negative impact on customer satisfaction, if anything it was boosted in knowing that business could still continue during a crisis.

The board was happy that their investment in a business continuity plan was paying dividends and the IT department came up smelling of roses for spotting the problem quickly and managing to fix it in accordance with the processes they had already put in place for this type of emergency.

John McGhee (former DBA and IT manager)