Call Center Disaster Recovery India

Indian call centers have established business continuity sites in India and overseas through strategic tie-ups with other centers to provide disaster recovery services with a focus on business continuity.

Today's IT-dependent businesses have to keep pace with huge advances in technology, which have escalated the costs
of downtime. They also have to deal with the risk of adverse impact from unforeseen events, natural or manmade disasters that could interrupt or disrupt the business.

This is why it is so essential for companies to have a disaster recovery strategy in place, to minimize the impact of a disaster and to recover from a disaster quickly. It's not just mission-critical data that is affected, but the software, hardware and systems essential for it to run on. A disaster recovery plan or business continuity plan (DRP/BCP) or business process contingency plan (BPCP) describes how an organization is to deal with potential disasters.

Some common threats to businesses include the following:

• Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods
• Fire
• Disease
• Cyber attack
• Utility outages - communication breakdown, power loss
• Terrorism

The high cost of downtime

Disasters can have crippling effects on a business. For example, fires permanently close 44% of the affected businesses. According to a study by Cummings, Haag & McCubbrey, 2005, 43% of companies that had a major loss of computerized records never reopen, 51% close within two years, and only 6% will survive long term.

On the positive side, companies affected by the Sept 11 attacks with tested business continuity plans in place resumed business within days.

With their reliance on business-critical data, global businesses don't take a chance. They factor in disaster recovery as part of their overall business strategy. Remote back-up facilities for their call center operations are distributed at different locations in different parts of the world. India with its sophisticated technology and expertise is a chosen spot for strategic call center outsourcing and disaster recovery operations.

O2I's disaster recovery strategies

O2I's call centers are fully equipped to offer disaster recovery services of a high order, based on geography or operations.

Geographical plans are location-based and can be at the site, state or country level. For example if a company has a 100 seats managed by a call center, it can have a variety of disaster recovery plans.

• Disaster Recovery at the Site level - Along with the existing 100 seats there can be 50 other seats in the same facility reserved for the company which cannot be used for any other purpose
• Disaster Recovery at the State Level - Additional reserved seats in the same city or state.
• Disaster Recovery at the National Level - Additional reserved seats in a different state or city.
• Call center disaster recovery can also be based on operations. This includes the maintenance of disaster recovery centers.

Which disaster recovery strategy is right for your business? Contact O2I for your specific needs.

Backup and preventive strategies

While considering possible emergency situations, the complexity of the task can be determined by studying the situation in advance and documenting the requirements for disaster recovery.

What are the requirements to keep the business up and running? These could include some or all or of the following:

• Switching to an alternative business process
• Insurance coverage
• IT systems back-up and recovery
• Premises and essential equipment back-up and recovery
• Customer service back-up and recovery
• Administration and operations back-up and recovery
• Information and documentation back-up and recovery

Companies use the following technologies to protect their data:

Data replication – synchronous or asynchronous replication – or a combination of both. The objective is to l imit data loss and aid data recovery through continuous, real-time replication keeping replicas up-to-date at all times. The ideal solution also provides automatic failover for instantaneous data and application availability and protection against data corruption. Remote backup maintains data offsite, in a different location from the original data.

Continuous backup will ensure that all data operations (writes, deletes, copies, etc.) are captured and recorded to a journal at all times. Users interested in the highest data integrity and recovery speeds would prefer this option as this ensures that recovery is practically instantaneous.

The focus is on business continuity

Disaster recovery has a focus on business continuity – that is, keeping a business running as smoothly as possible with minimum interruptions to service.

Business continuity planning (BCP is a part of an organization's risk management, which involves crisis management and disaster recovery planning.

BCP is a methodology used to create a plan spelling out how an organization will resume critical functions within a preset time after a disaster or disruption. The development of a BCP manual goes through five main phases:

1. Analysis - impact analysis, threat analysis, impact scenarios, recovery requirement documentation spelling out business and technical requirements for recovery within a preset time-frame.

2. Solution design - selecting the most cost-effective disaster recovery plan to meet the requirements: outlining the crisis command management structure, location of a secondary work site, data replication, application, software etc

3. Implementation – execution of design elements

4. Testing and organization acceptance – Conducted annually or bi-annually, testing may include: crisis command team call-out testing, technical swing test from primary to secondary work locations and vice versa, application test, business process test. The purpose of testing is to determine whether the business continuity solution satisfies the organization's recovery requirements.

5. Maintenance activities include confirmation of information in the manual, testing and verification of technical solutions established for recovery operations and documented recovery procedures. Typically this is done annually or bi-annually.

Do you want 99.99% reliable business continuity plans firmly in place for your business? Talk to O2I right away.

Disaster recovery services offered by Flatworld

Indian call centers provide different levels of site protection against site failure to suit specific business continuity requirements, through Cold, Warm and Hot recovery procedures.

Cold, Warm and Hot Recovery

Cold DR - There can be two functioning centers which have extra furniture and structured cabling. If a center in one of the cities closes down then operations can be shifted to the functioning call center in the other city. Computers can be set up and the WAN link redirected. This could take a few days.

Warm DR - Along with furniture and cabling there are also computers set up. In case of any emergency the necessary applications can be installed on the computers and the WAN link redirected. This would take up to 24 hours.

Hot DR - The costliest option, but also the most prepared choice. Here the center is online and ready for agents to move in, in case of an emergency.

For example, there could be two functioning centers in different cities with additional provisions to accommodate more if the need arises. So if one of the call centers has to close for a while then the agents from here can be flown to the call center in the other city where the traffic has been redirected.

When a business cannot tolerate any downtime in the functioning of its operations, this is the best option. In the case of Hot DR , the s ystem configuration, database and content changes at the Recovery Site are continuously synchronized to mirror the outsourcing company's mission-critical production environments. The speed of recovery is instantaneous as the Recovery Site is in active mode at all times with a fully redundant configuration.

End-to-end solutions

Indian call centers have established business continuity sites in India and overseas through strategic tie-ups with other centers to provide disaster recovery services. They offer end-to-end business continuity services from prevention and preparedness to response and recovery. The Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan covers people, IT, physical site, data recovery and back-up, and risk management.

BS 7799/ ISO17799 compliance for data security

Indian call centers are compliant with industry standards BS 7799/ ISO17799 to assure comprehensive p hysical security and data security. Customer processes, data and services are secure and protected at all times.

These disaster recovery centers work just like an actual functioning call center. Customers will not be able to tell the difference.

Best-of-breed technologies, experienced personnel

Facilities include immediate access to:

• State-of-the-art hosting facilities
• Enterprise-class data center
• Data backup/restore system
• High-speed Internet connectivity
• Information Security protection (Firewall, IDS)
• Backup power
• Computers, peripherals, network connectivity, communications equipment
• Highly skilled operational, technical and administrative personnel
• 99.99% reliability, seamless expansion

The infrastructure backbone is built on high-speed, redundant, reliable voice and data networks that work on best-of-breed technologies. International Private Leased Circuits (IPLCs) ensure voice integrity and quality. The entire technological infrastructure is backed-up, from servers, processors, leased lines, and storage systems to fully backed-up UPS and generator systems.

These facilities, along with the expertise of the call center agents ensures that your business recovers as quickly and efficiently as possible. Their services are excellent and can even exceed recovery requirements.

If you would like to outsource call center disaster recovery and business continuity services to India , please fill in the inquiry form. Our Client Engagement Team will contact you within 24 hours.

For reliable service that will ensure seamless interaction with your customers, please contact us here with your outsourcing requirements.

Call Center Services from Outsource2india

Inbound Call Center Services - Outsource your Inbound Call Center Services to O2I and greatly benefit from high quality services at a cost-saving of up to 50%.

Outbound Technical Support - For specialized Outbound Technical Support Services which include appointment setting and merchant account services, outsource to O2I.

Technical Helpdesk Services - Transform your business processes and increase your business value with O2I’s high quality Technical Helpdesk Services.

CATI Services - Outsource to O2I to benefit from next-generation CATI Services, which employ state-of-the-art technology.

Disaster Recovery Services - O2I offers end-to-end Disaster Recovery Services and business continuity services which are 99.99% reliable.

Email and Chat Support - Focus more on your core business, while we at O2I answer your customer’s email queries. Outsource your Email and Chat Support Services to O2I.

Outsourcing to India: Discover Why India is an ideal place to outsource to, Read more on Why Outsourcing has become necessary and find out more on what services can be outsourced to India.