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Articles
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Grace under pressure...
Disasters can take many forms. Take the recent experience of Western Bank, of Beaverton, Oregon. Their primary processing facility had to be evacuated due to an engineering structural review related to earthquake preparedness. Fortunately for its customers and its parent company, Washington Mutual, Western Bank was well prepared.
"For Western Bank, this kind of surprise was a powerful reminder of just how important it is to have a tested disaster recovery plan in place ahead of time." says Darrell Shaw, Assistant Manager, Commercial Data Processing, Western Bank.
"It was a busy Friday, and we needed to clear a growing back log of customer transactions. Our plan was to resume operations early Monday in a nearby recovery site. Fortunately, we had prepared with a business continuity plan that included on-site mobile recovery services from DRS Disaster Recovery Services."
The Road to Recovery
At the DRS Recovery Center in Charlotte, technicians went into action restoring Western Banks image item processing software systems. Recovery systems used during regularly scheduled disaster recovery test were initialized and staged on a waiting DRS Mobile Recovery Lab (MRL). While the DRS MRL would make the 3,000-mile journey to Oregon, DRS technicians would board commercial flights in order to provide technical support throughout the recovery effort.
The Western Bank recovery would be conducted at a nearby branch facility where data-center communications support was available as part of the disaster recovery plan. "Our recovery systems arrived early Monday morning, and were quickly readied for resuming processing operations. We started a new day on the system, and quickly began our first runs of the image capture process. Network expansion out of the MRL facilitated host connectivity and allowed us to set-up additional image keying operators in our temporary facilities," says Darrell Shaw, Western Bank.
Several years ago, Western Bank had chosen to enhance their image item processing operations business continuity plan by examining new alternatives that delivered recovery systems on-site. One important element of this capability would be that their multi-shift employees would not be required to travel to a hot-site, thereby increasing their participation in recovery operations. And being realistic about the personnel issues associated with disaster response also provided positive business benefits. Incoming courier logistics would not have to be changed, and processed work would be cleared directly through normal and established relationships. These elements of their disaster recovery plan helped the Western Bank team effectively deal with a backlog of incoming items while maintaining normal customer services functions.
"Courier operations resumed with little change to normal schedules. Bank personnel were shuttled daily by bus to conduct regular business activities. We processed everyday and well into the night for two weeks, keeping our host customer processing systems updated and our depositors accounts current. Image item archiving to tape was taking place to assist in making our primary image statement production system capable of producing customer image statements" says Darrell Shaw.
"We knew from our testing with our disaster recovery vendor that we could recover our systems, but the mobile on-site ability really helped our employees and helped us maintain the normalcy we needed to get the job done. A disaster recovery plan is like auto insurance, you never plan to use it but when needed, it proved to be invaluable."
Darrell Shaw, Vice President, Western Bank is a thirty year veteran of item processing operations, currently managing a five-state operational unit of Western Bank, Beaverton, OR. 503-520-6867.
DRS Disaster Recovery Services, Charlotte, NC provides image item processing disaster recovery services that include hot-site and/or mobile on-site facilities for its subscribers, and can be reached at info@drs.net.
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