Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Services in London

BC and DR work hand-in, but they focus on different things. BC is about keeping your most important business processes running during a disruption. For example, making sure staff can still access critical tools or communicate with customers. DR, on the other hand, focuses on restoring IT systems and data after an incident.

In simple terms: BC keeps your business moving, and DR gets your technology and data recovered as quickly and safely as possible. Both are essentials parts of a resilient setup.

RTO and RPO sound technical, but they really boil down to two practical questions: How long can your business afford to be down? And How much data could you realistically afford to lose?

We work through these with you in a business-focused conversation, not a technical one, and identify which parts of your organisation need to come back online first following an incident. Once those targets are agreed, we build the right recovery setup around them – and just as importantly, we test it. DR testing is like a fire drill: it rarely goes exactly as expected, but that’s where you learn what needs improving and how confident you can be in your plan.

Planning an effective DR strategy starts with a BIA, which helps you understand what parts of the business are most critical and how quickly they need to be restored. In essence, it’s very similar to the RPO above. From there, we shape your continuity and recovery plans in line with good practice (including ISO 22301 principles).

The most important step is then actually testing the plan. DR tests rarely go exactly as expected, and that’s the point – each  exercise shows you what works, what doesn’t and what needs improving. It’s a cycle of planning, testing, learning and continually strengthening your recovery capabilities.

It really depends on the key risks you’re trying to protect against. With an on-premise disaster recovery setup, you’re tied to your physical location – if that site becomes unavailable through something like fire or theft, recovery becomes much harder. Cloud-based DRaaS gives you far more flexibility: you can lose your primary office and still keep the business running, and you avoid the hardware costs that come with on-prem servers.

On-prem may still make sense in very specialised environments (e.g. labs or organisations with strict IP protection), but for most businesses the priority is protecting everyday systems like HR, accounts and Microsoft 365 – and cloud-based recovery usually fits those needs best.

For all services we manage – whether that’s Microsoft cloud environments, private cloud or supporting technologies – we use UK or European data centres. This ensures your data stays within jurisdictions that meet UK data sovereignty and data protection requirements. We don’t use providers or platforms that fall outside those standards.

When choosing a BCDR provider, experience and proven recovery capability matter far more than promises. A provider should not only back up your data, but routinely carry out test restores and demonstrate that they can bring systems back reliably. Look for a team with real-world BCDR experience and familiarity working with insurers, recovery specialists and other third parties during incidents.

Useful questions to ask may include: How often do you carry out test restores? Can you show evidence of successful recoveries? What does an example recovery plan look like, and how do you help us practise it?