The webinar, “An Insider’s Look into BCP Software,” will offer BCP planners an exclusive opportunity to take an in-depth tour of ResilienceONE®. Attendees will see the software’s intuitive business process-based methodologies, easy-to-use interface, cutting-edge analytics, business continuity task automation, built-in incident management and recovery tracking tools, and much more. Strategic BCP president and co-founder, Frank Perlmutter, CBCP, will host the session.

“It is important for BCP pros to understand that they are no longer limited to using traditional, bulky, expensive software models popular in the past, and that more powerful and intuitive software is available,” says Perlmutter. “Strategic BCP’s experts have heard – and lived through – the horror stories of entities that have spent enormous amounts of time and money taking long surveys just to generate paper plans that simply can’t be deployed fast enough when a disaster strikes. This is why we built ResilienceONE from the ground up – to help our colleagues become better planners. Our software has changed the minds of thousands of users and BCP planners, and we are excited to show people how such powerful software can be so easy to use. We also thank Continuity Insights for this opportunity to share our technology publicly.”

Strategic BCP was rated a “Positive” in Gartner’s “MarketScope for Business Continuity Management Planning Software” report (Roberta J. Witty, Tom Scholtz, May 13, 2010). According to the MarketScope, customers of companies receiving a “Positive” rating are advised to “continue planned investments,” and potential customers are advised to “consider this vendor a viable choice for strategic or tactical investments, while planning for known limitations.”

Strategic BCP also offers private demos of its ResilienceONE® BCP software for the media, business continuity planners and consultants, and executives from organizations of all sizes, from small to mid-sized companies to global enterprises. Please email contact@strategicbcp.com for more information.

According to the MarketScope, “having current and effective recovery plans is the key to success during a disaster, and these tools are ‘ground zero’ for effective crisis and business recovery. We anticipate adoption to grow in the next five years, given the increased focus from government agencies — federal, state and local — as well as private-sector preparedness initiatives.”

“We strongly agree with Gartner’s prediction of growth in the BCM market, and are excited to be recognized in the MarketScope by such a prestigious research firm,” says Frank Perlmutter, president and co-founder of Strategic BCP. “We’ve seen more and more BCM planners deploy powerful software tools like ResilienceONE and move away from document-based BCM plans and traditional bulky, tedious software programs. Utilizing automated, business process-based methods for determining risk and downtime is imperative to business recovery and loss mitigation.”

According to the report, “Gartner recommends using a BCMP tool as early in the BCM program’s life as possible, because of the benefits of standardization, centralization of business operations data that exists nowhere else in the organization, and the ease of updating recovery plans to ensure that the most-current business and IT practices are addressed.”

“BCM planners – now more than ever – need to prove their worth to the executives and colleagues using their plans,” says Perlmutter. “Any BCM planner that is simply organizing documents, distributing long surveys, and spending hours configuring confusing software is putting their job at risk. As the MarketScope depicts, automated, intuitive software is vital for BCM planners trying to recover their IT, people, and assets when a disaster strikes – and increase their value at their organizations. We believe ResilienceONE meets that criteria.”

According to the MarketScope, customers of companies receiving a “Positive” rating are advised to “continue planned investments,” and potential customers are advised to “consider this vendor a viable choice for strategic or tactical investments, while planning for known limitations.”

Strategic BCP offers demos of its ResilienceONE® BCP software for the media, business continuity planners and consultants, and executives from organizations of all sizes, from small to mid-sized companies to global enterprises. Please email contact@strategicbcp.com for more information.

About Gartner’s MarketScope Process

The MarketScope is copyrighted 2010 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Frank Perlmutter will present this month’s Disaster Recovery Journal webinar: “The Downfall of the BC Professional: Setting Up a Personal Plan to Quit Bad Habits.”

The webinar will be on Wednesday, April 21, from 2:00 p.m. EST – 3:00 p.m. EST, and will offer expert tips on how business continuity professionals can increase  job security by adding more value as a planners – and eliminate traditional practices that have led to the downfall of many of our colleagues.

Sign up for the webinar here: http://www.drj.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3994&Itemid=487.

ResilienceONE® version 5.5 was released on January 25, 2010. The software’s upgrades include:

• Custom reporting that allows users to create and output specific, detailed reports of any data elements in ResilienceONE® via simple check box selection.

• Secure Help Desk portals for ResilienceONE® users to report problems, ask questions, request system enhancements and get real-time status updates through a personalized portal.

• Enhanced IT risk management metrics

From our press release from today:

“ResilienceONE® was built from the ground up by experienced BCP planners who were tired of building subjective, document-based plans and using expensive, modular-based BCP software programs,” says Frank Perlmutter, co-founder and president of Strategic BCP. “We continue to listen to our customers and invest time and money to develop powerful, risk-based software. We are proud to release another enhanced version of ResilienceONE® and continue to help BCP planners manage their organizational risk and continuity.”

The demo is on Tuesday, April 13 from 10:15 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. If you’re familiar with ResilienceONE®, be sure to stop by and see some of the software’s powerful new features.

We will also be in Booth #305, so please stop by and tell us what challenges you’re facing. If you’d like to meet in New Orleans, please email or call me.

We’re looking forward to a great show – hope to see you there!

-Frank

If you’re attending the Disaster Recovery Journal Spring World 2010 conference from March 21 – 24, please stop by our booth #411.

Strategic BCP’s business continuity experts will discuss the customizable ResilienceONE “Trialware” program at the upcoming DRJ Spring World. Trialware users can have access to the majority of ResilienceONE’s BCP features for a customizable time and cost structure. Program participants are immediately given log-in information to ResilienceONE upon sign-up.

“Now more than ever, business continuity professionals must prove their worth by developing strong, action-based plans that can immediately reduce downtime during a disaster. ResilienceONE has helped planners do this for years with built-in methodologies that objectively determine the most critical business functions that should be recovered first,” says Frank Perlmutter, CBCP, founder and president of Strategic BCP. “The Trialware program is designed to let planners experience the software’s ease of use, utility, and power, and to let experienced BCP software users compare ResilienceONE to traditional software. We are proud to present ResilienceONE once again at DRJ’s Spring World event, a premier gathering of business continuity professionals.”

BCP Planners interested in the program can get more information at http://www.resilience1.com/software/trialware.aspx.

“John Berry, director of the federal Office of Personnel Management, said that the 270,000 government employees in the region would lose a week of work if Washington receives 20 inches of snow. Major stock exchanges in New York are expected to remain open. Trading, which is primarily conducted electronically, is not likely to be affected by the storm. Officials in Washington estimate that each day agencies are forced to close in Washington costs the government approximately $100 million in lost productivity, although the total is lessened by the increased capacity of government employees to work from home. The Insurance Information Institute reports that major winter storms can cause hundreds of millions of dollars in broader economic losses.”

Work from home is essential during these times.  A well-laid out Business Continuity Plan is essential.  That includes step-by-step operating procedures and the supporting IT and people required.  I personally take my own medicine and use the procedures in ResilienceONE (my company’s Business Continuity Software) to fully operate during any type of outage.  If all you have are general narratives in your plan, you are not prepared.

SaaS is software that’s subscription-based and hosted within the vendor’s secure IT environment. The primary purpose of a SaaS model is to release you and your organization from the hefty cost and time overhead associated with traditional software, allowing you to start using your software for its primary business purpose as soon as possible.

The principle of a true SaaS model is simple: YOU have no responsibility for anything IT-related. YOUR VENDOR absorbs all the time, responsibilities, and costs for all of the IT hardware and services related to running the software.

Some BCP vendors do not adhere to this principle. Here are some red flags to help you find the SaaS “pretenders.”

1. All hardware and software hosting should always be at your vendor’s location, not your site.
2. Hardware configuration should always be done by your vendor and seamless to you.
3. Upgrades should be done automatically with zero downtime for you. CDs or downloads to your desktop or server environment are NOT SAAS.
4. Pricing should be subscription-based (monthly/quarterly/yearly/etc.). True SaaS includes no upfront configuration or ongoing maintenance costs.
5. There should be no extra costs. Period. Additional hardware purchase, hosting fees, ongoing hardware/software configuration, training, maintenance, and upgrades make it a pretender SaaS model.
6. All that is needed to access True SaaS software is a standard web browser.
7. The original programming language of the software is web-based. Most software in the industry was initially developed in client/server code. This non-web language requires a massive code translation (with a hefty time and monetary investment) by the vendor. Most vendors that started this way have not been willing to make the effort to re-codify their software.
8. Licensing should include unlimited users. Watch out for “cost per license” models.

The bottom line is that software that requires you to do anything IT-related or requires more than a couple of days of configuration, it is not truly a SaaS. Once you get past the slick marketing, you can start to realize the true benefits of SaaS and save your organization considerable time and money.

This promotion allows BCP pros using traditional document-based software – like LDRPS – to switch to ResilienceONE® for free for the term of their current contracts. Participants can also lock in 2009 pricing for future contracts.

We’re also offering a complementary Data Migration Analysis to determine the validity of users’ current data and help map it over to ResilienceONE®.
Join the leaders in the industry who have made the switch to the best BCP technology in the industry, ResilienceONE®.  Get more information here.