Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
produce reports required by local, state, and federal agencies, such as statements of tax with-
holding and quarterly income statements.
CONTROL AND MANAGEMENT ISSUES
Transaction processing systems process the fundamental business transactions that are the
lifeblood of the firm's operation. They capture facts about basic business operations of the
organization—facts without which orders cannot be shipped, customers cannot be invoiced,
and employees and suppliers cannot be paid. In addition, the data captured by TPSs flows
downstream to other systems in the organization where it is used to support analysis and
decision making. TPSs are so critical to the operation of most firms that many business
activities would come to a halt if the supporting TPSs failed. Because firms must ensure the
reliable operation of their TPSs, they must also engage in disaster recovery planning and TPS
audits.
Disaster Recovery Plan
Unfortunately, recent history reminds us of the need to be prepared in the event of a natural
or man-made accident or disaster. The disaster recovery plan (DRP) is a firm's strategy to
recover data, technology, and tools that support critical information systems and necessary
information systems components such as the network, databases, hardware, software, and
operating systems.
Those TPSs that directly affect the cash flow of the firm (such as order processing, ac-
counts receivable, accounts payable, and payroll) are typically identified as critical business
information systems. A lengthy disruption in the operation of any of those systems could
create a serious cash flow problem for the firm and potentially put it out of business. Com-
panies vary widely in the thoroughness and effectiveness of their disaster recovery planning,
and, as a result, some have a harder time resuming business than others.
Fires, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and tornados are the most dramatic causes of busi-
ness disasters. TiVo operates with 600 employees and 700 servers that store more than 100
TB of data. Its headquarters is in a part of the country where there are occasional earthquakes
and other natural disasters. As a result, the firm set up its disaster recovery site in Las Vegas,
a location relatively free of natural disasters and with an infrastructure proven reliable for
operating the city's many casinos. 3 If a disaster strikes its headquarters, computer operations
will be relocated to this site until normal operations can be restored.
However, according to Bob Vieraitis, vice president of marketing for change control
software vendor Solidcore Systems, “Up to 80 percent of IT outages are caused by improper
changes to the IT environment.” 4 Such changes would include ill-planned upgrades to op-
erating systems and applications or hardware that cause a system failure instead of improving
matters. For example, a well-meaning system administrator at Web conferencing company
WebEx Communications made a minor change to a file on one of the company's more than
2,000 servers spread across seven data centers. As soon as the change was made, the server
went offline, making the service unavailable to a number of WebEx customers. 5
disaster recovery plan (DRP)
A formal plan describing the actions
that must be taken to restore
computer operations and services in
the event of a disaster.
 
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