Birkemeier Consulting

When an explosion last June knocked out 9,000 servers at The Planet, a Texas data center, 7,500 customers were affected. Though this level of disruption is rare, it provides a sobering reminder of how reliant businesses are on high tech, and if that technology suddenly fails how fast it can sink a business.

Prevention and disaster planning are key, say experts, to surviving a crash and keeping costs down over the long haul.