This nightmarish scenario is an extreme example of downtime occurring at the worst possible moment for a business. But the truth of the matter is that there is never a good time for downtime, even planned downtime. As more and more employees become mobile and working- from-home policies relax, the concept of the 9 to 5 workday has eroded. Furthermore, as companies become more global, with employees, customers, partners, and suppliers spread across every time zone, it becomes increasingly difficult to schedule times when no one is affected.

Compounding the need for always-available services is the additional fact that your customers are rarely contained between the four walls of your organization. Today's IT departments are responsible for supporting two unique sets of customers with different sets of needs: internal employees and external customers, partners, and suppliers. But these constituencies are more similar than you think: Just as your internal employees increasingly expect to perform their jobs anytime and anywhere, your external stakeholders share the same expectations in their ability to purchase, receive support, or access your data and systems. Forrester refers to this concept as the extended enterprise because a business function is rarely, if ever, a self-contained workflow within the infrastructure confines of the company.

There is no "easy button" when it comes to running always-on, always-available services; a blend of a mature and stable process, people, and, of course, technologies are required. For companies that have matured their approach to high availability and disaster recovery to the point where they are one and the same -- a concept that Forrester refers to as business technology resiliency -- it has taken years of refining policies, adapting responses to downtime, and securing the appropriate levels of investment.

While you can't transform your organization overnight into an always-on, always-available enterprise, these three initial steps will get you on the right path: