"There is no plan in place," continues Salman. "In this case, all the work that enabled companies involved people's goodness of heart - everything was volunteered on an adhoc basis." There is no question that the companies that work within the IT industry regardless of their size, practice disaster management as part of their regular business practice so there is no threat of data loss interruption of business. Considering all the companies realize the importance of the fact that they will not be able to survive the losses should they not be prepared with their own infrastructure, they invest in the proactive measures that ensure the integrity and longevity of the intellectual property that runs through their networks.

But as long as businesses and industries don't realize the critical importance of their own networks and data, the demand will never reach an inertia high enough to pressure DR into a policy document. Because of the globalization phenomena, industries expand to different physical sites; business operations setup branch offices and companies who represent international brands, have the need to be able to use effective communication technologies that enables constant coordination. Khurram Rahat, Country Manager of Teradata Pakistan had recently made a wonderful comment about the role technology plays in any organization saying that, "The technology sector for any country or market is comparable to the heart that pumps the blood through a living organism. You simply cannot function without it."

Consider this hypothetical example: a food and beverage company has its processing plant in one part of the city, outsources its transportation to another company and carries its inventory in yet another part of the city. The data from all these locations is consolidated into one central database residing on a physical server which can be accessed by everyone involved in the business operations. Should any unforeseen circumstance arise in any one of the physical sites outlined in the example above, it will slow down the production until the issue can be resolved. However in the event that anything happen to the location that hosts the server, any coordination that is ongoing for the company's hundreds of processes, which also impacts everyday business decisions, will stop. And the stoppage will be more than just a temporary one. In case there is no disaster recovery site proactively planned into the business continuity plan of the organization, you can say goodbye to any competitive edge the company may have garnered with the system in place.

"CBR's website was down soon after the blast for quite some time. There should have been no reason for it to be down. These sites should have disaster recovery planned. Take the State Bank of Pakistan as an example -- it has a very strong DR plan in place, but then that's just one entity. This procedure has to be part of an industry policy or a corporate strategy. And I cannot emphasize enough as to how critically important DR strategies are for any business of any size which has any kind of technology running through it."

But the question to ask is why the industry has to wait for a government body to initiate the policy or why even involve them. The stakes for any formal public agency, along with the culture and environment they function in, are very different than the ongoings in the professional industry. It would be comparable to say to allow private companies to plan core business functions of any government body. The mismatch in that case, would be very evident. Private enterprise is very commerce drive. On the other hand, a monopolistic environment, such that governments are categorized into, has no competition. Despite globalization, the core function of the government or any ministry is to facilitate activity and protect the interests of its citizens. It is because of the competition that drives the private enterprise that makes the integration with technology so critical.