The workshop has really given us a good springboard to talk with our board and our upper management to indicate where IT is as a whole, things that we need in the future, and possible pitfalls. As a whole, I think we are much better prepared to respond to disasters following this workshop. We had identified critical systems before, but we had not gone to the depth we did in the workshop. We expanded it tenfold. We are better able to articulate the justification for future investment in DR than we were. We're really proud to have hosted this workshop, and just so thankful to Info-Tech for being able to do it for us. We found this workshop to be incredibly valuable in that it was reasonably priced and resulted in a wealth of information and tactics.

The way that Info-Tech does disaster recovery is to tackle it from a business continuity perspective. I like the way that they did it; it was refreshing and helped me get different members of my team on the big picture. I really like the practical aspect of it. That's where the value is derived. It helped to give me action items that I can also take higher up the food chain. A lot of times in disaster recovery exercises they use scare tactics, something that's highly improbable. I liked the Info-Tech table-top exercise because it is very practical. Rather than saying there's a thermonuclear meltdown, or zombies are coming, we actually took something that could happen; there's a fire in the building, and now they have to shut off gas and electricity. What do we do? For some of the members of the team, it was eye-opening. If we put a couple of key things in place, it makes a huge difference. It was excellent. We had a shortcoming when it came to disaster recovery, and in some cases just business continuity. This helped me to bring it to light with the other members of the team.

It turned out to be a great team-building exercise. We were elbow-to-elbow for a week. It's hard to get any team that's in technology to pull up and be strategic, and Info-Tech did a good job of making sure we were there with each other. At the end of it, all my staff were very happy that I put them through the workshop and we felt that we're very well armed for what we need to do. I was pleasantly surprised at the level of expertise, the engagement, the passion we had around the conversation. I just didn't know how much we were able to get from Info-Tech. This was a great start for us. The table-top exercise was exceptionally enlightening. We as a team were engaged with it, joking and arguing at the same time. To see the results, and then have something tangible -- I feel honored to be able to say to my senior staff, "Here's where we're at. Here's why we need to do this." Most people think you just do a DR test once a year and that should be okay. We thought through it; "how would this actually work?" I adamantly give it a 10. You hit a home run. When I saw the presentation that was put together, aligned with everything I wanted to do this year and gave us the roadmap for what we need to be. I just talked to my CFO about it, and he said "Okay!"

Not only was the material relevant, but as we worked through things over the span of the week we figured out what's useful and what's not useful for the next day or the next several hours. It continued to be more and more relevant as time went on. The exercises were nice and methodical. Going through a process like that and having it already laid out not only made it easier and more efficient, but gave us a consistent outcome. The outcome especially after including various groups of people from my team, to business leaders, to interior operational leaders, and so on, helped us to really set a path that was tied to what business needs. From a DR perspective, several of the things that we did over the week pointed out a few extra things my team really needed to do that we hadn't considered yet. I was really happy with the outcome there. There were a few shortcomings in the data center that we'd built in terms of equipment or roles of that equipment that we really hadn't thought all the way through. Those were big because those make our data center even more responsive in terms of being able to get ourselves back online after a disaster.

DRP is one of those subjects that's easy to put off. I decided to draw a line in the sand and have the workshop. It's probably the best investment we've made in IT in general in terms of our ability to get a better handle on where we are and where we need to be. One of the things I've been so impressed with Info-Tech about has been that not only do you say "Here are best practices," but "Here are tools to help you get started in emulating those best practices." That's really been helpful for me. Never having done an Info-Tech workshop before, it was an eye-opening experience that really helped us focus our attention where it needed to be focused and left us with a set of tools that we can now pick up and start to advance the ball down the field.