Following its US parent, which launched into the business in April with a Business Recovery Service for both 3090 and AS/400 users, with stress on the latter (CI No 1,150), IBM UK this week unveiled its first two forays into disaster recovery. An AS/400 Modle B60 will be installed in a van ready to rush to an emergency as the basis of the Mobile Business Recovery Service, and IBM SiteView will provide 370-type users with a remote electronic watchdog to oversee their operations round the clock, seven days a week. Starting in January 1990, IBM plans to have several trailers fitted out with complete AS/400 B60 systems, and the service, which will also include consultancy for creation of a customer emergency plan, complete with a dress rehearsal at the company’s site, and annual re-testing of the plan to take changed circumstances into account, will be included in the price, to be announced later, and to be graduated according to model size. The SiteView service will offer a range of options from monitoring to recovery of system and network-critical components – extending to air conditioning and power. The spy in the installation will be a PS/2 which will be in regular contact with an IBM SiteView Monitoring Centre, sending details of alerts whether the site is manned or not; as well as monitoring building sensors it will have capacity to handle up to four 3270 sessions concurrently. Using the NetView Automated Network Operations and Automated Console Operations facilities, it will also be able to initiate recovery actions from the IBM Managed Network Service. The SiteView Monitoring Service handles up to 10 sensors, plus the 3270 sessions starting October, at UKP15,000 a year with no sensors, UKP20,000 with up to 10. The SiteView Automation Monitoring Service adds up to 40 further sensors, NetView alert monitoring and data transfer over the IBM network and will follow in February at UKP30,000 with no sensors, UKP40,000 with 50.
