Research has shown that up to 20% of businesses have no IT business continuity provisions in place, leaving them exposed to business loss and down time should a disaster occur. Joining the UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) trade missions to China this year was Denis Ubhi, managing director at Reliability Networking Limited (Rel-Net).
UKTechnologyLive spoke with Denis as the mission concluded about how British innovation can help to deliver continuity to China’s technology-reliant businesses, regardless of external impacts…
UKTechnologyLive: How can companies more reliably protect themselves against unexpected events that impact the daily running of the business?
Denis Ubhi: There is plenty of evidence of the havoc created by unexpected events, such as floods and fire, especially, within the telecommunications and IT sectors. A solid plan to expect the unexpected and deliver business continuity requires action across the entire technology process, from systems design to implementation.
UKTL: Surely businesses today are putting teams in place and making greater efforts to protect themselves from this sort of eventuality?
DU: Absolutely, but the truth is that with today’s increasingly complicated telecommunications and internet infrastructures, many companies still need to bring in professional help deliver the most reliable and cost effective solutions. That is going to drive their business growth in the longer term.
UKTL: So continuity is king?
DU: Business continuity and disaster recovery planning are now accepted as basic requirement for every business and organisation. A detailed business continuity or disaster recovery plan should not only exist, but be up to date. It should reflect the actual on-going needs of the business activity or function.
UKTL: Is there a piece of advice you can give that all businesses should keep in mind?
DU: Have your strategy in place to facilitate a pro-active rather than reactive approach, since the best way to prepare for a disaster is to avoid the disaster in the first place.
UKTL: Do you have experience consulting with Chinese businesses already?
DU: Rel-Net has contracted with Huawei in Sweden and had dealings with the parent company in China. But we welcomed the opportunities UKTI presented in terms of meeting new potential business to business (B2B) customers that will enable us to grow through export and overseas representations.
UKTL: Joining the UKTI trade mission to China was a high value undertaking for Rel-Net?
DU: Completely. Last year Rel-Net received a scholarship from UKTI to join the Indian Marketing Strategy programme for the top managers in small to medium enterprises (SMEs). That was a rich opportunity for a consultancy like ours to develop international business growth and the visit to China has also turned out to be equally excellent. With a focus on operators, communications and M2M, we visited a number of companies and attended seminars including one-to-one meetings with potential partners in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Shanghai. For me, the visit to Huawei Technologies was the highlight. I was able to meet some of the key people from Huawei and develop further opportunities to work with them.
