Mostly I am happy for people to use the Business Continuity (BC) definition loosely, because most of the time they mean the same things. But strictly speaking:
- BC means: practices, processes for entire organisations and partners.
- DR means: IT processes and preparedness that ensure IT can operate continually.
So as an example despite having top-notch DR, an organisation can still be paralysed by flood, fire etc. Ie. BC planning explores the entire organisation and its business partners. And there are certainly lessons to be learned from DR thinking to walk through scenarios of what happens if X happens? Who then does what?
DR is not a bad place to focus a lot of effort to ensure that IT strategy is thought through, as IT success does not happen by chance.
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