Disaster Recovery Facilities in the making?

As promised, more on the subject of disaster recovery planning, with a twist.

A recent article in my local news paper, The Morning Call, got me thinking about the whole issue of disaster recovery facilities as an economic development project. The article chronicles the trials and tribulations of a group attempting to create an environment attractive enough to convince disaster planners from Wall Street's largest investment firms to locate their disaster facilities to the Pocono Mountain region. The group has amassed $15 Million in funding to be used to convince the firms that it would be a good idea to house such facilities outside of a "blast zone" that is Manhattan, and one that is on a separate power grid zone. I give a lot of credit to the local power authority for isolating my region from the last large power outage that affected most of the North East US. This alone does not make the Pocono mountain area an ideal place to put disaster backup facilities.

There are only two main routes that run to the west out of Manhattan, Interstate 80 which runs to the Pocono's and Interstate 78, which runs through New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. Both routes would likely be affected by any wide scale disaster in the area, making it harder to get people to these newly established facilities. Both regions discussed in the article, the Pocono's and the Lehigh Valley are about 2 hours away from Manhattan on a good day. As a result of this and other factors, most Wall Street firms have located their backup facilities in northern New Jersey. The bandwidth required to support synchronous data replication is already in place between Manhattan and say Jersey City. The same can not be said for the Pocono's or Lehigh Valley areas. Most disaster recovery plans call for generating your own power for a good amount of time, so being on a separate power grid just relieves you from getting fuel to your generators over a long term.

So what is the point? I am somewhat embarrassed to say that the leaders of the region in which I live would spend $15 Million on training and education and not have a single tangible thing to show for the investment. No enhancements to network bandwidth, facilities, or agreement with service firms to provide the essential support functions that would make the region a viable option for disaster recovery services. If they really wanted to gain the respect needed to be in the running for consideration as a viable disaster recovery location, then at least get the bandwidth in place. Until large firms sign up to use it, at least the local citizens could enjoy having great Internet service.

The opposite of "if you build it, they will come" seems to be "if you promise it, they might consider it" and in this case not one firm has taken the bait. This makes for a pretty expensive fishing trip.