Quakes trigger boost in DR initiatives

The Canterbury earthquakes prompted a spike in disaster recovery initiatives and a renewed interest in cloud solutions. Ulrika Hedquist reports

Nexus Foams, a developer and provider of foam, fibre and flexible polymers, this year identified a need to change its disaster recovery plan to make sure the business is protected.

Like many smaller organisations, Nexus “had some loose plans” around disaster recovery but nothing formalised, says the company’s CFO, Tracey Swinehart.

“What prompted us to get a lot more serious about it were some of our key customers - international customers in particular,” she says.

In order to be approved as a supplier to some of its larger customers, Nexus was required to demonstrate it had a DR plan in place.

The company, which is spread across three locations — two premises in Auckland and one in Christchurch — is now looking at implementing an online recovery system from Auckland-based business continuity specialist Plan-b.

Nexus has had fibre connected to its premises only for the last 12 months, says Swinehart.

“Having an online solution wasn’t really feasible for us [before we had] fibre optics,” she says.

Currently the back-up systems are tape drive-based, in addition to in-house mirroring. “Now that we’ve got fibre we are able to look at an online system so we can completely scrap the old systems,” she says.

There are two key imperatives in the event of a major disaster, Swinehart says — saving the stock, which the company has a lot of, and keeping the systems up and running.

Nexus has its own intranet-based PHP system, which it relies upon heavily for day-to-day business.

“We use these systems every single day. They add a huge amount of value for us but we have obviously also become very dependent on them,” she says. “If we had an outage that would definitely affect us.”

The key thing for Nexus is that with the Plan-b solution, the data would not only be backed-up — a ready-to-go server would have the company up and running in under an hour, should there be an outage, whereas today, that could take days.

Plan-b also offers physical workspace where customers are guaranteed seats in the event of a disaster or major outage. These facilities have desks, phones, computers, meeting rooms, kitchen facilities and parking — all ready to go, so Nexus staff would be able to just walk in and start working, Swinehart says.

The events in Christchurch were another driver for assessing and updating the DR strategy, she says. Nexus’ Christchurch branch employs five staff, and unfortunately, they were all directly affected by the earthquakes. However, the company’s warehouse was unaffected and staff felt safe there.

Nexus has also recently achieved ISO 9001 accreditation. To Swinehart, having a comprehensive DR plan in place is part of risk management and a form of insurance. “A lot of customers are expecting it these days,” she says.

One of the most challenging aspects of implementing a DR plan is selling the value of it to the managers of the business, she says.

“You have to look at it like an insurance policy - and hope that it will never be used — rather than consider it a cost,” she says. “It’s adding value to the integrity of the business, and adding value to customers and investors.”


Online PHP system

A number of years back, the business started developing a range of “little internet applications” to solve specific problems, says Swinehart. This project was largely driven by a former production manager, who now works as a consultant to the company. Today, local IT contractor Turnstone supports all Nexus’ systems.

“They’ve got good PHP guys,” she says. “The beauty of using something like PHP is that it’s open source and well-supported.”

The PHP system is now linked live to the company’s Sage ERP database, she says. It can be accessed from anywhere at any time.

“We use very little of the standard forms and reports out of the ERP system. Instead, we have created our own user interface with all of that information. We use it in every aspect of what we do, from quoting right through to delivery and reporting,” she continues.

Nexus also has its own CRM system; a corrective and preventative actions system; personalised dashboards and graphical views that allow staff to drill down to find relevant information.

One of the benefits of the in-house system is automatic email messaging that notifies staff members as things happen, says Swinehart. This allows the team to manage the exceptions rather than spending time running reports and looking for information, she says.

The company is continually developing the system and adding new features to it — almost on a daily basis, Swinehart says.

“It has become a part of our business and we are so used to operating like that now.”

Keeping that system online and up and running through a potential disaster or outage has become vital to the company.

Swinehart says the auditors that reviewed Nexus for the ISO certification saw “huge value” in the way the company was using the PHP system to reduce complexity and to automate processes in order to be as lean as possible.

The organisation is currently working with the Kaizen Institute, going through a lean manufacturing process, she says. Kaizen — Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better” — focuses on ongoing development of processes in areas such as manufacturing, engineering, game development and business management.

“Again we will see our PHP system strongly tie into that, where we review every single thing we do and cut out anything that is not adding value to the customer,” says Swinehart.