Databarracks goes to PlanB to boost business continuity – Blocks and Files

UK continuity services firm Databarracks has acquired Scotland’s PlanB Consulting.

PlanB, acquired for an undisclosed sum, will be added to Databarracks’ Operational Resilience and Cyber Continuity consulting practice.

Established in 2007, PlanB Consulting offers business continuity, crisis management, resilience, and cyber incident response services. It is an ISO 22301 certification consultancy, and is also a UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) Assured Exercise Provider for cyber incident drills.

“There is no better independent business continuity consultancy than PlanB. I’ve spent over 30 years in the industry, and over the last few years the market has fundamentally changed,” said Mike Osborne, non-exec chairman of Databarracks.

He said the “old guard” of business continuity specialists had been “absorbed” by generalist IT service providers. “Sungard Availability Services sadly went into administration in the UK, and throughout the pandemic many of the smaller consulting providers took in-house roles,” said Osborne.

He maintained the operational resilience market had become “fractured” in the UK across cyber, data protection, IT recovery, and business continuity planning, “leaving few, if any” genuine specialists dedicated to end-to-end resilience.

PlanB has offices in Glasgow, London, and Abu Dhabi. Kim Maclean-Bristol, co-founder and director, said: “We’re pleased to find a home with an organization that gives us a broader market reach, and shares our values and vision for changing the way we make organizations resilient.”

In 2003, Databarracks launched one of the world’s first managed data backup services to bring “indestructible resilience to mission-critical data.” The data backup services were located in an underground former UK military bunker.

Last year, Databarracks launched Jump-Start, a cloud-based recovery landing zone. By using infrastructure as code (IaC), resources, networking, security, and governance are activated “within minutes” ready for a complete recovery, Databarracks promises.