BUSINESS CONTINUITY

OULTON HALL, LEEDS
24 February 2004
09:30 - 10:00 Registration and Coffee

10:00 - 10:10 Welcome & Introduction

10:10 - 11:00 Why Worry About Business Continuity?
Mel Gosling, Business Continuity Institute

Who should be concerned about implementing Business Continuity? What are the risks, and how do you assess them? What does the experience of others tell us? Can we do a Cost Benefit Analysis to assist the justification? Anyway, doesn't my Insurance cover me, and won't my customers understand?
Mel Gosling is the founder and Managing Director of Merrycon Ltd, and a member of both the Business Continuity Institute and the British Computer Society. Mel first became involved in Business Continuity as IT Manager of Independent Insurance in the early 1990s, and subsequently became responsible for developing and deploying Business Continuity Plans for all Independent Insurance Group's companies. Mel initially established Merrycon Ltd to provide consulting products and services in IT, Project Management, Strategic Planning, and Change Management, but following the tragic events of September 11th, developed a Business Continuity Planning package of consultancy and software to enable organisations to develop and deploy appropriate Business Continuity Plans quickly and easily

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee

11:15 - 12:00 How to build a Business Continuity Plan?
Simon Banks, Sungard Availability Services

Now you know you need it, how do you build a Business Continuity Plan? What needs to be included? Who needs to be involved? How do you keep it valid, and why do the implementation projects typically fail?
Simon's background is within IT and includes Programming, Systems Analysis, Project Management, Audit and Security Management. He has 13 years experience in the Business Continuity field, spent working with Financial Institutions and various sectors of the Service Industry. He has used this to deliver cost effective, tried and tested Business Continuity solutions to his customers. Simon became a Member of the Business Continuity Institute in August 1999.

12:00 - 12:45 Lunch

12:45 - 13:30 Choosing a Business Recovery Partner
Kevin McNeil, Synstar Business Continuity.

Can you really do recovery on your own? Can you afford the investment to a back-site? Why not choose a Business Recovery Partner to provide systems premises, but who is the right one? What are the advantages and/or pitfalls? How do you maintain a valid Contract?
Kevin has over 24 years in the IT industry, including technical roles in the IBM mainframe arena, customer support, and service delivery management. He also has 10 years in services sales, including 6 years specialising in Business Continuity. Kevin joined Synstar in November 2000, and was promoted to UK Sales Manager in October 2001. He became a Member of the Business Continuity Institute in 2001.

13:30 - 14:15 Standardising PC Server Recovery?
Julian Box, Ji Consultancy Group Limited
I have so many PC Servers, I'll never recover them in the time required by the Business. With so many configurations, systems software, application software, etc., is there really a way to standardise PC Server Recovery? People tell me ghosting / imaging won't work; why?
Having originally worked in the IBM Mid Range environment in the mid to late 1980's, Julian Box took the concepts of reliability from this arena into the PC Server environment. He has now worked for the last ten years towards attaining as high a level of systems availability with the current Intel technologies. To this end, ji consultancy's customers have had no user impacted unscheduled downtime in eight years

14:15 - 14:30 Tea

14:30 - 15:15 Large System Recovery & Availability?
Keith Crispin,Heterogeneous Data Solutions Limited

Do you have the time to perform a full recovery of your large systems, like an iSeries? What are your options for reducing this recovery? Can you keep the services available following a disaster? Does this really need the investment of a second system?
Keith's background is in IT and includes mainframe, Unix, NT and iSeries experience in the retail, security, human resource management and availability management sectors. During the last three years with Shield Software Services Limited and more recently, Syan Limited, Keith has worked with a number of major account customers and business partners to provide data and application availability on the iSeries platform.

15:15 Close & tea