According to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there have already been nine extreme weather events in 2017 — each generating over $1 billion in losses. In comparison, the annual average between 1980 and 2016 was only 5.5 events.

The data shows that we are on pace for a record-setting year for extreme weather events, and we haven’t even gotten into the heart of hurricane season yet.

This begs the question: Are businesses ready for the potential weather-related chaos that 2H2017 will bring?

Forbes and IBM recently polled 184 senior global IT executives to see just how vulnerable today’s companies are to service disruptions, and the results were not pretty.

In the study, 80 percent of respondents claimed that their disaster recovery (DR) plan is capable of ensuring business continuity. However, as Forbes pointed out, less than a quarter of the same executives claimed to include all critical applications in their DR strategies.

As many as 78 percent of enterprises are now at risk from service disruptions.

“Clearly, many executives don’t realize the full extent of risks they’re running,” stated Chief Insights Officer at Forbes Media Bruce Rogers. “And tight budgets force many to make tradeoffs.”

Forbes listed several reasons why businesses struggle to create effective business continuity and DR strategies. Some of the top reasons include:

• A lack of resources: 73 percent of executives reported that they lack the necessary funding and other resources to cover all of their critical applications. And 25 percent claimed that the cost of running performance tests keeps them from running scans more frequently.
•  Internal discord: 61 percent of executives claim that business continuity, DR and crisis management are siloed, instead of administered as an interrelated whole.
• Complexity: Over two-thirds of respondents claimed that their biggest application recovery challenge comes from complexity, and the interdependencies that arise from end-to-end business processes crossing multiple departments, hybrid-IT environments and applications.

It’s now time to think about your own business’s DR and business continuity strategy.

Apex Technology Services is a New York City-based managed services provider (MSP) offering a range of DR and business continuity services. Apex can work with your organization to ensure that your critical applications will remain up and running when foul weather arises.

Take our advice: You don’t want to wait for a major storm to see if your backup network services will seamlessly kick into gear.  There should be no surprises. Plan ahead, so that you can rest assured knowing that your critical applications will continue running in the event of a catastrophe.

To learn more about how Apex Technology Services, click here.