When disruption hits, speed and coordination make the difference between a temporary setback and a major crisis. That’s where IT disaster recovery (ITDR) comes in. ITDR is the backbone of getting your systems back online quickly and in alignment with business priorities.
But recovery doesn’t stop at IT. ITDR needs to be understood in the larger context of enterprise resilience, where business continuity, risk management, and recovery all work together as a connected capability.
Coordinating ITDR Across Teams for Stronger Resilience
Business operations are becoming more complex and tightly connected. Cloud services, hybrid work, artifical intelligence (AI) systems, digital threats and vulnerabilities (like cyberattacks), and third-party vendors all add layers of risk. At the same time, expectations are rising. Customers won’t wait around while you figure things out, and company leadership expects data-driven confidence in recovery plans, not guesswork.
ITDR needs to plug into a broader enterprise resilience strategy that connects IT disaster recovery plans to business continuity, crisis response, and risk management. That’s where business continuity disaster recovery (BCDR) comes in.
BCDR takes a broader view of recovery across the organization. It combines ITDR solutions with people, processes, vendors, and customers. The aim is to keep the business running, no matter the disruption. Both are vital components to a recovery strategy, but when the teams responsible for them operate in siloes, they leave gaps. Servers may be restored, but if business units aren’t aligned, operations can still stall.
In short: ITDR gets your systems back online quickly. BCDR keeps your business running and limits the impact of disruption.
Where Do ITDR and BCDR Overlap (and Why Does That Matter)?
In theory, ITDR is a part of BCDR. But in practice, different teams often manage these programs separately using different tools and different definitions of “recovery.” Your BCDR strategy should account for the technological realities that enable operations to continue and the vulnerabilities that cause them to stall.
Better results come when IT, security, risk, and continuity teams work together and view resilience as a shared strategic responsibility.
How Do You Bring ITDR and BC Together to Support Enterprise Resilience?
Resilience is top-of-mind for many organizations today, but the road to achieving it across the business is often uncharted. Here’s how we recommend tying together your IT disaster recovery strategy and BC efforts to help support your resilience program:
- Map your business services to IT systems. Don’t just list apps and servers. Instead, connect them to the business functions they support.
- Set common recovery goals by aligning recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) across IT and business teams.
- Use the same data. Shared dashboards, metrics, and dependency maps keep everyone on the same page.
- Run joint simulations that test both system recovery and business response.
From Recovery to Resilience
Understanding the difference between ITDR and BCDR isn’t just about terminology. It’s about building a foundation for true resilience. Shareholders, executives, and customers don’t really care about how you achieve resilience; they just care that you’re equipped to handle disruption when it inevitably occurs.
The closer your IT disaster recovery solutions are tied to your business continuity strategy, the faster you can recover, and the better you can protect your customers when it matters most. To learn how Fusion can help you unify IT disaster recovery and business continuity into a single, resilient strategy, contact us today.
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