Executive Summary

This report looks into the importance of IT in the modern business arena and establishes
the importance of having an IT Contingency Plan in place for ensuring uninterrupted
services and business processes. We look into the IT uses of a Company ABC and assess
their need for an IT Contingency Plan after reviewing their IT infrastructure that will be
executed. After due review of the risks and shortcomings in the existing systems which
include risks of data theft or loss by internal or external sources, we come to the
conclusion that a contingency plan is necessary for the IT aspect of Company ABC and
we would suggest an IT contingency plan for them to apply at the firm. Basically, our
recommendation was storage of Data in RAID protected HDD drives thereby ensures that
while any read request can be serviced by any drive in the set, it also ends up storing the
data in two different HDDs thus reducing the risk of regular data loss by more than
50%. To add further safety from data loss, we also recommended a cloud backup of the
mirror servers completed files, in addition to measures which ensure physical safety of
the whole IT infrastructure, like contracting with computer part sellers to give the
company credit in case of major incidents. Not only this, we also proposed staff hiring
and training to smoothly execute the contingency plan at time of mishap. Keeping the
fact in mind that local firms are hesitant to invest much money in such solutions, we kept
focus on keeping the plan as cost effective as possible, which ultimately led to a plan that
will cost the firm BDT. *** is proposed as a establishing cost with annual recurring
expenses of roughly BDT ***, which is quite affordable for the firm, based on their scale
of operations.

1. Introduction:
Company ABC is engaged in importing goods from China and distributing them in
Bangladesh. With 45 employees in 3 branch offices in Dhaka, Sylhet and Sujanagar
Upazilla and a head quarter in Chittagong, ABC smoothly runs the operations of
importing and distributing over a thousand products per month. Company ABC consists
of two accounts teams, three marketing teams, one central human resource team and two
sales team. The placements of the teams are shown in the below diagram:

Accounts Team
Sales Team

Marketing Team
Sales team

Chittago
ng

Sujanaga
r

Top Management
Accounts Team
Human Resource Team
Marketing Team
Sales Team

Dhaka

Marketing Team
Sylhet
Sales Team

Figure. 1.1 Teams in different Cities

All field workers of Company ABC are provided with a laptop each and can remotely
access file server at their own convenience. Furthermore, branch offices in Dhaka and
Sylhet along with Chittagong headquarters have good broadband connections and
Sujanagar has access to GrameenPhones wireless Internet connection. The organogram
of Company ABC is given below to illustrate the hierarchy as well as the resources
provided to them.

CEO

Branch Manager
(all four offices)

1 Laptop
1 Desktop
1 Mobile phones

4laptops (1each)
4desktop (1each)
4 Mobilesphones

Accounts Team
2 Accounts
-2 Desktops
-2 Mobilephone

Marketing
Team
5 Marketers
-3 Laptops
-2 Desktops
-5 Mobilephones
-

Human Resource
Team
3 HR Managers
- 1 Laptops
-2 Desktops
-3 Mobilephones

Sales Team
25 Sales Persons
-3 Laptops
-7 Desktops
-25
Mobilephones

Figure 1.2 Company ABC Organogram and Resources Provided

Information Technology (IT) is the hardware, software, telecommunications, database
management, and other information processing technologies used in computer based
information systems. (O'Brien & Marakas, 2011). What this implies is, data (more
specifically, business data) can be stored and manipulated within IT systems. Wherever
there are IT systems in place, there is some associated risk of system failure. An IT
contingency plan is designed specifically to reduce, if not nullify, these risks of system
failure by creating an elaborate system and protocols for a firm to execute in case a
sudden incident causes an IT system failure (Lennon, 2002). This paper fulfills the

purpose of proposing IT contingency planning ABC and answers the question why it is
important to have IT contingency plan, what might be the possible strategies to do so and
how to implement them in the most effective manner. Elaborated explanations are
covered about the proposed IT (Information Technology) contingency plan for ABC,
emphasizing on the importance of IT contingency plans for organization. The report will
provide a detailed account of what IT contingency is, why it is necessary in modern
business and what scopes, which includes the basic boundaries and limitations of the
company, were there to formulate the contingency plan. It will then follow into providing
a simple yet elegant solution to create an IT contingency plan for the firm that includes
RAID protected servers and cloud solutions, complete with the budgetary requirements,
training needs and methods to test and review the plan that is suggested for
implementation.
A video presentation explaining this report and the contingency plan is uploaded on
YouTube in the following link:

Conclusion
The solution of the contingency plan for the IT environment we have proposed so far is
not without flaws. There are certain limitations to the solution; employees needs to be
reminded regularly to backup the working files on a daily basis and basic forgetfulness
will take its toll as well. Also, with the rapid changes and advancements in technology, it
will not be long before much of the solution will become obsolete and further
investments would be necessary for the firm to keep the plan updated and safe. Our plan
was made by taking all the boundaries and feasibility analysis into account, which was
important, as the plan should be as much viable and appropriate for the company in the
context. Therefore, we did miss out a lot other minor and major accidents assumptions.
To sum up, not every plan is completely fool-proof and has its limitations, but at the end
of the day this solution we formulated targeted to minimize and eliminate such limitations
to the best of its capacities in a cost-effective manner.
Moreover, the installation of this contingency plan will not only allow them to provide
services to clients smoothly with minimum interference, they will also have an advantage
among their competitors since they have measures in place to keep data more protected
than others who are also doing similar work. This can also be used to attract more clients
by exemplifying how highly the business values its internal and external data and how
they have invested money to make sure the data is well kept and protected. Hence, an IT
contingency plan is essential for modern businesses. To conclude, most firms need an IT
contingency plan for quick recovery of digital data and the solution provided will grant
enough protection and security to all aspects of the IT infrastructure of Company ABC.

Reference:
http://www.wikihow.com/images/sampledocs/4/Contingency-Plan-for-Data-Recovery.pdf
http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-contingency-planning-in-business-definitionexample-importance.html
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/IT
http://www.itl.nist.gov/lab/bulletns/bltnjun02.htm
http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/cloud-computing