Geographic Diversity

Last week's blackout once again has the words "geographic diversity" on the tips of the tongues of Wall Street executives. Federal regulators had used the phrase in their draft white paper outlining business continuity guidelines for the financial industry, designed to ensure that the markets could get back online quickly after a "regional disaster." For such a plan to work, backup data centers would need to be far away from a firm's primary data center - far enough that a major disaster couldn't take out both facilities. Regulators eventually decided not to impose a minimum distance between data centers. But the Blackout of 2003 is causing some companies to once again rethink their disaster recovery plans, according to a story in today's New York Times (free registration required).

"The geographic dispersion of this event really causes some rethinking for companies," said Jim Simmons, the chief executive of Sungard who said customers told him: "Gee, I never thought it would be out on Long Island and out in New Jersey."