Business continuity is the set of plans, spare capacity, and practiced steps that keep an operation going after a failure. The goal is to resume the important work, not merely to restore a single machine.
A plan of that kind names a Recovery Time Objective (RTO). That objective is the longest interruption the operation will accept before the work must be running again.
What the Plan Has to Cover
- The work that must continue. Orders, payroll, support, or a production line, named in advance.
- The spare path. Another site, another system, or a manual step that can carry the work.
- A practiced switch. People have run the spare path before the failure, so the first real use is not the first time.
Keeping the Work Going and Restoring a Machine
| Compared | Continuity Plan | Machine Restore |
| Success looks like | The important work is running again | That one machine is back as it was |
| Time target | The accepted length of the interruption | However long the restore takes |
| A site that is gone | The spare path was chosen for this case | There may be nothing local left to restore |
