Review By: Kelly Winston
09/11/2002This book delves into the latest and greatest along with the tried and true strategies for disaster recovery. It was organized from the analysis, to planning and strategy, to plan testing and maintenance.

There are excellent real-life examples throughout the book. These examples hit home for me, reading about how the disasters you heard about in the news were handled by people in businesses and industries such as ours. Whether you know it or not now, you need a disaster recovery plan before it’s too late.

Practical plans and strategies are laid out in easy-to-use form. You could easily adapt these strategies within your own organization. There were also many helpful diagrams to explain the plans and processes.

This book was an excellent tool for me, being relatively new to disaster recovery planning. The book is very informative and explains strategies clearly and concisely. There is an extensive and very helpful chapter on resources to use within your company, community, state, and nation. As an educational tool, I found it engaging. I think anyone involved in testing, quality assurance, development and Web management could learn a great deal about the subject from this book. It could also spark many ideas to make your current plan better. It would be useful for anyone to learn new ideas, from novices to experts.

I especially liked the “true story” examples. It made the value of creating, testing, and maintaining a plan realistic. I was also impressed by the straightforward advice throughout the book about how to get buy-in from senior management, along with other teams, for disaster recovery strategies.

I appreciated the writer’s style. It flowed well. Although he was obviously very knowledgeable, his casual style made it very enjoyable to read. The many illustrations made it easy to understand and share with others.