Following the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the Federal Reserve Board, the Department of Treasury's Office of the Comptroller and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), issued the Interagency Paper on Sound Practices to Strengthen the Resilience of the U.S. Financial System. Among several sound practices, the paper recommended that financial services firms establish reliable backup operations that support the recovery and resumption of the U.S. financial system within two hours of an outage. The cascading, multi-state power outage in August of 2003 reaffirmed the need for remote operations.

As New York City's financial firms continue to deploy business continuity and disaster recovery programs that meet these recommendations, several key issues must be considered. Key among these issues are backup location identification and network connectivity between primary and backup locations to support synchronous replication of critical financial data.

The critical need for backup locations outside New York City that utilize a separate infrastructure, including power grid, watershed and transportation systems, is priority one. While this sounds simple, it becomes more complex to find locations that meet diversity criteria while also remaining close enough to support synchronous data transmission. Most synchronous replication applications have maximum latency thresholds that inhibit the use of networks with a total distance greater than approximately 125 optical miles. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, along with Wall Street West, recently announced an initiative to offer Northeastern Pennsylvania as one such location to meet both requirements.

After identifying an optimal backup location for primary New York City facilities, several network criteria must be considered. The unforgiving nature of synchronous replication increases the requirements for network diversity and resiliency. Physical and electronic route diversity, dual gateway designs for network redundancy and physical route diversity, including multiple Manhattan entrances and exits, would need to be designed and implemented.

Similarly, business continuity and disaster recovery programs, more so than many other networking programs, benefit from a single-provider, end-to-end infrastructure that eliminates the operational complexity of piecing together multiple supplier networks. Many IT managers believe that using multiple service providers to build diverse options is the only way to ensure diversity. That is not always the case. Using a service provider with the resources to build critical diversity elements into an overall solution, a willingness to collaborate with customers, and a commitment to rapid response times, could result in a more appealing end state.

While financial firms strive to execute sound practice recommendations, they should look for solutions with providers that understand the critical nature of their business and support Wall Street initiatives with highly reliable implementations.

Jeff Allen is Vice-President, Offer Management at Level 3 Communications, 720-888-1689; email: jeff.allen@level3.com; web: www.level3.com.

Jim Ryan is Director of Outreach and Network Development at Wall Street West, 610-758-5219; email: jryan@wallstreetwest.org; web: www.wallstreetwest.org.