Dumb Stuff

Here's the CW rant I did on the silly public DR thing that happened in PA.  I had a decent amount of comments, and all but one agreed.  This fellow didn't - here's what he said:

"Today I read the Opinion (below) on the discussion regarding the proposed Northeastern Pennsylvania’s real estate development project, as advertised to help address the Business Continuity (“BC”) requirements of Wall Street firms. I think the author’s opinion is emotional, not adequately supported by facts and way over the top in its condemnation. The opinion failed to recognize many important realities or acknowledge the greater good that such thinking and commitment, on the state, federal and private sector levels, to providing more and potentially better backup options brings to the business community and to the population at large. Our vulnerability and, thus, our need to secure adequate resiliency is not a family secret any longer. I feel that the options promoted by the group from PA have merit, despite the public fanfare brought on by the sizable financial commitments made by the government and private parties in this project. I strongly believe that Mr. Duplessie, who is a self-proclaimed analyst, failed to properly analyze the story or the situation, beyond the perceived need for secrecy. I was among many there as an attendee at the meeting on October 10, 2006. I arrived by car (not helicopter), met the many parties involved, asked questions and witnessed the media event afterward. Perhaps most importantly, my firm knows what it is looking at in these promotions. My colleagues and I analyze alternate sites options professionally for clients. We take into account many factors of the site options and the specifics of individual client requirements. We have seen nearly every solution promoted in the past twenty-five years. While it is prudent for individual companies to not advertise where and how they conduct business continuity, the available solutions are public knowledge.

For your consideration and the consideration of the readers who read the incomplete thoughts offered by Mr. Duplessie:

• There is no building to target - The buildings are proposed and not yet built, nor has ground been broken for any building.
• A level of privacy was maintained - The helicopters flew to the grounds of a hotel off-site where the meeting was held, not to the sites. No clients names were featured during the session and no client commitments were advertised.
• There are few secrets - Information on the location of commercial DR sites, once built and marketed, and also the location of private sites, is quickly common knowledge anyway, due to the necessity for the employees to know where it is and how to get there. The plans are communicated in advance throughout the organizations’ personnel on a broad scale and to all key vendors, the U.S. mail, FedEx, UPS and even the water cooler vendor. The family, friends and neighbors will all know and so will hundreds of local merchants. Let’s not kid ourselves about secrecy.
• Other options abound - The New York financial community has split operations and DR sites all over the NY area, the Northeast US, around the country and even around the world already.
• Who brought up Jersey City? - The author alludes to a common knowledge that there is a concentration of Wall Street BC and DR sites in Jersey City right now. If that were, and indeed still, true, by putting that ‘knowledge’ in the media Mr. Duplessie was doing essentially the same thing for which he condemns the promoters…giving out new ideas to terrorists – like they need them.
• More options = less concentration of risk - The proposed plan would dilute any alleged concentration in Jersey City or elsewhere.
• The real man in US Congress behind this is US Rep. Paul Kanjorski (PA), member of the Financial Services Committee in Congress, involved and knowledgeable of the issues and eloquent in his articulation. (The quote attributed to PA Rep John Siptroth is meaningless out of its context and is left open to interpretation. The more valuable points were made by Congressman Kanjorski.)
• The network radio and TV coverage of DR sites is not new; IBM, Sungard and many other entities have been in the national news before and while recovering companies from the outages of 9-11, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the first WTC bomb in 1993 and the NE US power outage of 2003, to name a few · Terrorism is only a subset of the universe of bad circumstances planners address - The author’s presumption is that the sole or primary criteria for firms to seek DR or Business Continuity (BC) is widespread, intentional, successfully targeted destruction. This is one of many concerns.
• DR is the sizzle, Real Estate is the steak - The proposed project in PA is a commercial real estate development project that is really promoting the positive features of the region, with regional diversity of business operations, personnel, BC and IT-DR just some of the potential justifications. There are housing, retail and other intended regional enhancements planned that have little or nothing to do with DR. Eagle Rock Alliance and its management have no commercial interest in the proposed project or have a prior, current or planned relationship with the Penn Regional Business Center (PRBC) project, its sponsors or any of its potential competitors. We believe that the high profile of the project has raised awareness in Business Continuity as an important business initiative and at the same time served to expand the horizon of viable solution options that the business community can consider for their individual business resiliency needs.

Yours truly,

Gerry Nolan

President

Eagle Rock Alliance, Ltd.

I do like the "self-proclaimed analyst" remark, touche on that one my friend.  However, the fact is after carefully reading your well crafted, albeit self-serving commentary, my position remains steadfast -  It was dumb.

Had you read the article with half as much effort as you put into the reply, you would have noticed that I had no issue with the business aspect - only with the way it was publicly done.  Flaunting "disaster recovery" in the face of non-stable, non-rational folks who have a history of doing bad things for bad reasons is just plain dumb.  How you could take that criticism to mean terrorism was the only need for DR is beyond me.  Standing around half-loaded dropping twenty dollar bills in the middle of a crack neighborhood while looking for the keys to my hummer doesn't mean I want to get robbed, nor does it imply everyone there wants to rob me - but giving them the idea isn't very smart.  We all know there is money in a bank, but does that mean the bank should advertise that there will be a very large infusion of cash on Tuesday afternoon at 4pm and oh, by the way, our alarm has been giving us problems and our 86 year old security guard isn't feeling well?  It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

While it certainly is also true that it isn't all that hard to find out where the DR sites are for those who you wish to destroy, not every would-be terrorist is a rocket scientist.  It is irrelevant if this were part of an intelligent well planned attack - but for a dope like the shoe bomber it just may have been a self-realization moment that called someone to action.  We aren't dealing with terrorist Mensa candidates all the time - the bad guys are a pyramid scheme, lots of smarts up top, lots of disilusioned loners looking to join the cult down below.

Of course the options they were promoting have merit - DR is good - and necessary.  Commercially pushing the cause was not a concern, it was the Wall St. angle that was dumb.  Some things should be left unsaid. You lost me by saying I was only talking about terrorism as the requirement for DR, which is dumb on your part.  If there has been a more vocal pundit on the needs for DR/BC in all companies large and small - in life or in print - I challenge you to find them.

Since you clearly didn't comprehend, or desire to comprehend, the simplicty of the message, I can only surmise that you sent this in the hope of being published and sounding smart, therefore enhancing your business opportunites, (or trying to get a favor out of Mr. Kanjorski).  I don't blame you for that at all, but you seem so wildly off base that I'm afraid your rant may cause the opposite effect - I wonder how many folks who read this may interpret your pitch incorrectly, and assume that means you support enhancing the operating efficiency of terrorists?  Yikes.

Anyhow, thanks for reading!