Business Continuity Plan - Bird Flu

Bill Gates has recently been really active with his pursuit for humanity work... he and wife wanted to become really compassionate. and they did..

According to the world wealthiest man, the AIDS epidemic is much worst than you think it is. There are 40 million people living with HIV currently, with growth rates of 4.3 million annually. First-line cost of treatments averaged at USD 200 and thus annual cost of treating everyone with HIV would be USD 13 billion a year and every year and so on. The biggest funding ever acquired from PEPFAR is USD 1.5 billion.

"The harsh mathematics of this epidemic proves that prevention is essential to expanding treatment. Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable. " - Bill Gates

Bird Flu:

So, diseases are threatening and even worst, it has double impact on the economy when cases like bird flu arises. Previously, we did wrote about bird flu economy.

According to this article written by Juken Consultancy, bird flu pandemic is considered by World Health Organization (WHO) as something with magnitude of "when" and not "if".

Risk factors are extremely relevant towards business entities and thus a proper business continuity plan (BCP) is required. A BCP is not just a plan or complex reports... it also consists of other components such as collaboration and technologies... As Computer Associate would put it, it should consist of the following ..

  • Process
  • People
  • Product
  • Partners
Objectives of such BCP are:
  • Minimize Impact
  • Improve recovery time
According to Mr. KK Tan (CEO of Juken Consultancy), the ministry of health for Malaysia has provided standard guidelines for organizations to deal with such crisis, however organizations are supposed to prepare own BCP.

This is yet again, demonstrates the lackadaisical attitude at the government side. What CA preaches is true, to make things happen, the four key components has to be involved and collectively functional.

However, since it is much harder to move a crowd than moving ourselves, thus companies operating in Malaysia should not wait for the "when-if" to happen before getting ready with BCP.

Technology Providers:

Even though CA has a good concept about implementing effective IT governance, however, they do not have the right products to complement BCP for blue flu pandemic. CA has always been a good preacher about IT cost management...

On the other hand, EMC Corporation, whose bread and butter is mainly about business continuity with respect to data storage and management. EMC has allies like McDATA, Dell Computer, EDS, CSA, Fuji Xerox, VPI International, VMware Inc and etc.

However, the company (NKK Technologies) I am currently attached with does provide solutions for crisis management.

We do have a framework with three core modules:

  • Geomatic Mappings
  • Data management
  • Complex Reporting

Referring to the case study section, our solution is currently being appreciated by NATO for the purpose of crisis management.

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