Released on: April 24, 2008, 2:33 am

Press Release Author: Berg Legal

Industry: Law

Press Release Summary: Comment from Luisa D'Alessandro, Associate in the Commercial
Services Department and IT law specialist at Berg Legal, on business risk & disaster
planning.

Press Release Body: "Management of legal IT issues is a key area in ensuring that
business risk is properly managed. As businesses increasingly rely on IT systems,
whether website presence, customer facing systems or back office management systems,
ensuring that the correct contractual issues are properly addressed at the outset
can mean that problems can be avoided or at least dealt with more effectively
further down the line should things go wrong.

"Any business procuring a key function IT system must consider the key business
risks which may result from system fault and look at appropriate ways in which to
guard against them.

"Service level arrangements for example, can prove invaluable from the customer
perspective in providing remedies which are proportionate to the types of system
default which may occur. Whilst suppliers are often reluctant to provide service
levels (and service credit arrangements for failure), it is certainly worth pursuing
a robust service level arrangement. This is a sure way in which to add leverage to
your position to ensure that issues are dealt with within agreed and appropriate
timescales and with proportionate and pre-agreed remedies to apply in the relevant
circumstances.

"Organisations should also consider whether business critical computer applications
should be the subject of a separate disaster recover or "standby" service to be
provided by an external party. These types of arrangement certainly come at a price
but then so too does the damage to a business in the event of severe IT system
default.

"Costs and benefits need to be balanced in considering whether to procure this kind
of arrangement but businesses should assess the commercial risk of system failure,
whether or not existing back up arrangements are sufficient and if not, where the
weaknesses lie and take an objective view of whether the business could operate at
least with an appropriate degree of efficiency without this kind of arrangement in
place. The type of standby facility also needs to be very carefully considered. For
example, businesses need to think about whether such facilities should be fixed
standby (i.e. a remote standby facility) or a mobile standby (meaning that the
recovery facility is brought to the customer site)."

Web Site: http://www.berg.co.uk

Contact Details: 35 Peter Street,
Manchester,
M2 5BG