Nearly 40 percent of line of business (LOB) and IT executives surveyed indicated “operational resilience” systems signify business and IT services that are always on and available, according to survey results published in an IDC White Paper, sponsored by SunGard Availability Services, Lack of Operational Resilience Will Undermine Enterprise Competitiveness: A Strategy for Availability.

While the survey results published in the white paper found expectations high for such systems, it also recorded fundamental challenges that hinder organizations achieving desired levels of continuous business operations. These potential vulnerabilities, it indicates, could lead to significant underperformance by an enterprise.

Currently the IT environments of most organizations involve a complex mixture of hybrid legacy infrastructure, middleware and application technologies that also include new capabilities involving virtualized servers as well as public and private cloud resources. For many enterprises, overcoming existing organizational and technology vulnerabilities that are impeding their ability to achieve operational resilience, which are only further challenged by the adoption of cloud, social, and mobile, will likely require utilizing a combination of internal and external IT services.

“With today’s changing and complex IT environment and so much discussion around topics such as big data and security, enterprises face challenging expectations from customers, employees and partners,” said Jack Dziak, EVP and GM of Managed Services at SunGard Availability Services. “To ensure they maintain an expected level of continuous business operations, whether for daily operations or when unexpected events occur, organizations must employ a new paradigm of operational resilience. For many, that will require a ‘hybrid IT’ approach.”

In addition, the white paper identifies three key building blocks for achieving operational resiliency and combating vulnerabilities. These are:

- Information security and data governance

- Business continuity and disaster recovery; and

- IT service management.

Collectively, these three disciplines support the level of agility and resilience needed for an enterprise to maintain always-on operations.

Additionally, the survey indicates the need for enterprises to develop an operational resilience strategy that uses the three key building blocks.

“The level of operational resilience required to ensure competitiveness will require setting priorities, synchronizing and orchestrating a vast set of factors and resources across an enterprise,” said David Tapper, VP, Outsourcing and Offshore Services, IDC. “These must include the three building blocks of an operational resilience business model.”