EEE会議（大停電と危機管理：日本は大丈夫か？）.......................................................2003.8.19
今回の大停電事件は米国で起きるべくして起きた事件であって、日本には関係ないという見方が一般的のようですが、日本に長年住んでいる米国人たちの見方は一寸違うようです。今朝小生の所に舞い込んできた次のメールの筆者は週刊誌「東洋経済」の記者で、たまたま一時帰国中にニューヨークでひどい目に遭ったようですが、彼女の分析を皆様はどう受け止められますか？
--KK
****************************************
Having just survived being stranded in NYC during the
blackout last
week, I was very interested in disaster recovery (DR) systems
in Japan.
When I was in Tokyo ealier in the
summer, news reports were flush
with headlines that TEPCO was in big trouble and power
outages were
feared during the summer. But the Japanese analysts
denied that
Japan was at risk of any power
outages. Under the circumstances,
I was very surprised. On the other hand, it seems the
fears were
overblown.
Disaster recovery systems in the US
were born of the fear that
power outages could wipe out valuable data on
hard drives. As
American firms became more reliant on technology, they
needed to
beef up their disaster recovery systems or else risk losing
everything. (Sadly, September 11 shows that power outages aren't
the
only risk to firms.)
Up until recently, I assumed that Japanese firms
would be well
prepared for disasters because businesses in Japan are
perpetually
threatened by earthquakes and other natural disasters.
Also,
Japanese firms, like European firms, take a long-term
view of
their organizations.
It seems my assumption was
very wrong.
According to reliable sources, about 80% of Japanese firms have
no DR plan at all. Nearly half (45%) do not back up PC
data regularly,
and only 36% back up network systems.
Incredibly, 30% of firms actually make hard copies of files as a
precaution to a technical failure.
Japanese companies in the
insurance and financial industries try to
adhere to international standards
of business continuity. But with
the high cost of business in Japan, most
firms say it is simply too
expensive to invest much in a DR plan.
I
hope that Japanese firms don't learn the hard way that they were
mistaken in not preparing for the
"unthinkable".
Julie Norwell, Correspondent Weekly Toyo
Keizai