.

Agility Recovery: The Powerful Business Continuity Suite

Jon Bahl

CEO


“We address the needs of a business personally, not with a big box solution, so that you pay for what you need – and not what you don’t – and businesses get that personal touch that other providers tend to forget about.”

Businesses today face more challenges than ever in maintaining continuity and resilience. Supply chain challenges abound, in large part due to the pandemic and geopolitical conflict. According to a recent Capgemini research, more than 80% of organizations saw a negative impact to their supply chain because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While companies previously were able to wing it with a do-it-yourself approach to suppliers and vendors, doing so puts them at risk of shutting down permanently. By planning extensively and adding redundancies for third-party vendors and suppliers, companies are at a lower risk of disruption and can continue serving their customers.

At this juncture, businesses are struggling to align with the growing requirements while maintaining continuity and resilience. This is where Agility Recovery, a leading business continuity and disaster recovery service provider, comes into the picture. “We are the only provider where customers can plan, train, test, alert, and recover, all in one place. We know businesses are more successful when they know how and where to access planning documents, train and exercise their plans, and know exactly what to do when an interruption occurs. Businesses know that with us, they are ready for a power outage, cyberattack, hurricane, or even succession planning for leadership changes,” points out Jon Bahl, CEO, Agility Recovery.

As a business continuity and company focused on disaster recovery solutions, Agility offers comprehensive set of offerings including Agility RecoveryPlanner, Agility Planner, Incident Manager, and training and testing solutions. RecoveryPlanner is a robust business continuity management software to help businesses meet pertinent BCM regulations, standards, and best practices while building a collaborative, enterprise-wide BCM program; Agility Planner is a simple, light approach to business continuity planning.

Another innovative offering that adds to the company’s value proposition is Incident Manager, a purpose-built solution to power a rapid, coordinated incident response, and Agility Alerts, a two-way emergency notification and alerting system offering five modes of communication and extensive reporting capabilities.

The company’s recovery services include mobile recovery centers, data recovery, power, generators, satellite communications, network, technology equipment, and ReadyTechGo. ReadyTechGo works as a compact, portable solution that allows critical workers complete mobility while remaining productive without increasing their cyber vulnerability, and was created in direct response to challenges Agility saw in the market.

“To help businesses align with the new work-from-home culture, we provide technology solutions for critical workers (laptops, connectivity options, and our ReadyTechGo solution), planning tools, alerting with the ability to reach anyone no matter where they are, and virtual tabletops,” adds Bahl.

Though the company has developed a set of some of the most innovative disaster recovery solutions provider, Agility knows that every customer has its unique requirements. As explained by Bahl, “At Agility, we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to planning and recovery. We customize and tailor every solution to each individual business. We address the needs of a business personally, not with a big box solution, so that you pay for what you need – and not what you don’t – and businesses get that personal touch that other providers tend to forget about.”

Preparing Businesses for the Worst
When it comes to best practices, Agility’s team knows the importance of training teams and testing and exercising plans. In doing so, the company believes that businesses will be better prepared when – not if – an interruption occurs. “If possible, you should train your entire organization on what to do in case of an incident, so they feel prepared and bought into the plans. They may also be able to provide valuable feedback on blind spots,” explains Bahl.

Be sure to include technology, communications, staffing to operate critical functions, workspace and facilities, and service provider/vendor plans – even consider bringing in your third-party suppliers for the tests.

To address these challenges, Agility provides a wide range of training and testing options to meet varying industry and workforce needs. Unsurprisingly, the team has seen an uptick in virtual exercises like tabletop exercises during the pandemic. Moreover, Agility offers on-site tests and tabletop exercises available for businesses to download and run on their own or facilitated by experts.

Work, Product Innovation, and Acquisitions
Since opening its doors, Agility Recovery has been a pioneer in delivering cutting-edge disaster recovery solutions to its clientele. Agility Recovery began as a division of GE in 1989 before being spun out into an independent company in 2002. The company’s mission is, and has been, to reduce the impact of business interruptions on organizations and the communities they serve. In short, Agility Recovery help businesses stay in business. That has been the common thread through all of its work, product innovation, and acquisitions.

“We have decades of experience helping businesses recover from real disasters and bring the collective experiences of thousands of hours in the field. We have evolved into the leading business continuity and disaster recovery end-to-end solution in the market,” extols Bahl.

Agility has made a number of strategic acquisitions through recent years with the intention of enhancing its offerings and ensuring that as needs change and expand over time, the company can still deliver a holistic solution. Its recent acquisitions include RecoveryPlanner, Recovery Solutions, Preparis, Rentsys, and BOLDplanning.

Extending their tailored approach to serving various industries, Agility recently acquired BOLDplanning, which provides comprehensive continuity and emergency planning products and consulting services designed for the public sector. Regarding the decision to acquire BOLDplanning, Bahl explains, “Agility leadership recognized that the best way to meet the public sector’s unique needs was to bring in a group with proven expertise and an exemplary track record in that industry. We were impressed with the work BOLDplanning had done and both companies saw a clear opportunity to enhance our customer offerings by joining forces.”

As part of the company’s expansion plan, Agility also invests in creating its own products to meet customer needs. Agility Planner came as a result of a market need for a lightweight planning and consulting tool. When it comes to the recovery side, the company’s recovery services team saw a need for a power and connectivity solution for critical workers for a new work-from-anywhere climate. The team created prototypes of ReadyTechGo, which was then launched to the market in September 2021.

“In the coming years, we plan to continue expanding globally through both our product offerings and international partnerships. We will also continue to develop new solutions; for example, we plan to release new modules for our planning tools and ITDR capabilities within BOLDplanning. We will continue listening to the needs of our customers and acting accordingly. We keep a strong finger on the pulse of what’s happening socially and regionally and use our customers’ input to continue innovating and boosting our footprint,” concludes Bahl.