By Al Cooper
Now that we have looked at some of the reasons for developing a D/R Plan for an Output Factory, we will look at some of the things that must be included in such a plan.
The first aspect of a D/R Plan is to identify the potential disasters that may befall a facility. These may include fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, plane crash, bomb, and more. Obviously, a print center in the Mississippi flood plain would help in identifying the most likely disaster, but the others must not be dismissed as impossible. On the other hand, a print center located outside Anchorage must have the ability to support staff stranded by inclement winter weather conditions.
Once the potential threats have been identified and evaluated, the next concern is to identify mission critical functions that must be carried on in the event of a disaster. Some management organizations skip this part and assume that everything is mission critical. In most cases, significant quantities of output can be delayed (in some cases, even missed all together) without causing negative financial impacts or customer support concerns.
Once specific output has been identified as mission critical, it must be prioritized. Obviously, those applications that have immediate financial impacts, e.g. invoice production, financial settlement or other income generating reports, must be given the highest priority. Internal use reports and other less critical output should be considered of a low priority and everything in between given a priority commensurate with the significance to continued existence of the corporation.
Having completed the prioritization of computer output jobs, capacity requirements for the D/R facility can more easily be quantified. Most people assume that the D/R site must have the same capacity as the original site. A lot of companies have gone to the unnecessary expense of developing mirror image facilities that exactly duplicate their print facility. This may be the case if 100% of all computer output is identified as mission critical, but most environments have the ability to prioritize so that a reasonable percentage of their work can be deferred to a later time.
A big question posed by large print facilities is ?Do I provide my own D/R facility, or do I use a Service Bureau?? My general response to this question is to suggest that if they have more than one Output Factory within their own corporation, then an effective D/R Plan can normally be developed to share resources in the event of a disaster at one of the locations. However, if a company only has a single such facility, it is usually financially beneficial to contract D/R services through a vendor.
The above discussion has only touched on a small portion of the information that must be gathered in identifying the requirements for a D/R site, but should give some insight into the process.
Once you have identified the facility and equipment necessary, there are still several issues that must be faced before the D/R Plan can be considered complete.
The first consideration, and often overlooked, is for application compatibility. As an example, if the original location uses an OMR Marking technology to drive their inserters, but the D/R facility uses a 3 of 9 bar coding method, then the application must be able to be changed quickly from one marking method to the other. This may seem like a minor concern, but, having a programmer trying to make last second programming changes during a disaster seldom results in satisfying results. It is critical to plan for these differences during the D/R planning phase, and develop solutions that can be easily changed. One solution to this type of problem is to have the application produce data in both formats, and have the printer resources at the primary location print the data in its format, while the D/R site uses the other format.
Another D/R consideration is the collective set of printer resources. In the Xerox world, things like Forms, JSL, JDL, etc. are resident on the printers, and have been customized for each application. What happens if you send the data file to a D/R printer that doesn't have a copy of those resources? It doesn't work. In the AFP world, the Page Definitions, Form Definitions, Overlays, Page Segments and Fonts reside on the host that the printers are attached to. If those processors are at a remote location and connected through a channel extender, then those resources may not be a concern for a D/R plan for a print center, but for those that have a server environment, e.g. InfoPrint Manager, within the print facility, then these resources must also be backed up at the D/R facility.
Another question to be asked during planning is ?How long will it take to get back up and running at the original location or at a permanent replacement facility?? The answer to this question will probably affect the cost of the D/R services from an external vendor.
There are far too many things necessary to an effective Output Factory D/R Plan to list in this column.
The last major consideration in developing a D/R Plan is ?How to test it?? Developing a D/R Plan is only the first step. Making sure it works is the second step. Continuing to test the plan is critical to making sure that application changes, host software and a myriad of other potential changes to the environment, don't negatively impact the ability of the D/R facility to quickly and accurately take over production if a disaster actually strikes.
In a corporate environment where multiple print facilities provide D/R for each other, a side benefit of the D/R Plan can be the ability to offload production print to the backup location when excessive print requirements lead to delays. This also ensures that the latest print resources are available in both locations, and ensures the integrity of the D/R Plan.
When an external vendor is involved as a D/R facility, then offloading excess print is usually too expensive to do on a regular production basis, so smaller, but regularly scheduled tests must be sent to the location for printing and inserting, even if they are only delivered back to the primary site for validation, without mailing. In this case, samples of all applications being backed up at the facility, must be sent regularly.
This completes the series of articles outlining things to look for and the analysis of information pertaining to an Output Study for an Output Factory. The next series of articles will delve into the presentation of the Output Study results to the facility management.