Maximum Tolerable Outage Alphabet Soup

Specialist subjects are notorious for their abundance of acronyms and BCM with its “maximum tolerable outage” or MTO for systems is no exception. How many members of the MTO family are there? At the last count there were seven, although families often grow, especially when you’re not looking. Here’s the list: Maximum Acceptable Downtime (MAD), […]

MTO, RTO… How about MTD (Maximum Tolerable Degradation)?

We’re sometimes all too easily impressed by a few acronyms, like MTO, RTO and others in business continuity. It’s easy enough to find out what they mean, either from this site or elsewhere, but the real issue is whether that’s the point. Let’s explain. MTO stands for maximum tolerable outage, and RTO is for recovery […]

Benchmarking and business continuity

Benchmarking business continuity means different things to different people, judging by the variety of information available. In one case, the standard by which comparisons are to be made is based on how many organisations (manufacturers and service providers) think their BC plan covers their supply chain risks. Opinions are subjective and no guarantee of results. […]

What's your maximum tolerable outage?

If the air conditioning breaks down in a hospital administration department in the height of summer, productivity starts to drop as the temperature rises. It becomes harder to stay focused on the task at hand, people get crabbier on the telephone with patients and suppliers and the “go the extra mile” motivation your organisation normally […]

Business Continuity Terminology – What’s the difference between MTO, RTO and RPO?

A common query that we come across in business continuity consulting is, ‘what is the difference between MTO, RTO and RPO?’ MTO is the Maximum Tolerable Outage The Maximum Tolerable Outage for a critical business process represents the maximum amount of time that an organization can survive without the business process in any form (manual or automated). […]