Business continuity is often used as an insurance policy, says Ian Masters, the UK sales and marketing director for Double-Take Software, in a guest column for IT Business Edge. However, he argues that business continuity can play a greater role in business. The evolution of IT and using technologies such as virtualization, data replication and Internet-based applications has meant that the traditional approach of business continuity has had to adapt.

For instance, virtualization is a good example of how IT can improve overall business continuity strategies, Masters says. You can split the applications and operating systems that a company would use to run its IT services from the physical hardware, thus making the IT resources work much harder, as well as more flexible in how they can be deployed.

"Looking forward, organizations are demanding more of their business continuity investment. Rather than protecting systems against failure, businesses can use this outlay to improve on how IT resources are used in general. This approach involves understanding the workloads that are present within the business, and how to optimize IT to support them."

Here are some other business continuity and disaster recovery tools available in the Knowledge Network.

ACU Technology Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Plan

IT Disaster Recovery Planning For Dummies Excerpt

NIST Contingency Planning Guide for IT Systems