Dell recall highlights continuity shortcomings

The sudden need to take Dell laptops out of service has highlighted a potential gap in continuity plans

The recent recall of over four million laptop batteries by Dell has highlighted deficiencies in many organisations' disaster recovery plans, according to IT services specialist Computacenter. Separately, shortcomings in the Dell web site could lead to affected laptops going unidentified.

Computacenter is recommending several steps firms should take to ensure they are not affected by productivity losses resulting from workers not being able to use their laptops.

"This has leapt to the top of the agenda as far as our customers are concerned," said Computacenter's director of corporate hardware, Ed Kenny. " Most organisations have robust IT disaster recovery procedures but few have looked at it from a distributed computing perspective."

IT managers should ensure that they keep a range of different devices in case some are found to have faults, and should also look to build a replacement stock so that high profile and critical users can be speedily provided with replacements in the event of a product recall, he added.

IT directors could also assemble a "hit team" to take responsibility for managing recalls in the future, and data back-up procedures should be reinforced, advised Kenny.

"It's also a good opportunity for the IT department to re-emphasise basic housekeeping at an individual level, and review health and safety and legal obligations" he explained. "Even if you're not affected by this incident it's a chance to get these procedural things on the agenda and into the budget for the next cycle."

Meanwhile, IT managers are being warned to take extra care when using the web site set up by Dell to handle the recall.

While the site will presumably correctly identify a faulty battery by its serial number, it defaults to "no need for replacement" and does not verify that data entered is correctly formatted. Customers who mistype the 20-character alphanumeric code may therefore be falsely reassured that their kit is in the clear.