Additional talent brings Business Continuity Strategy and Planning expertise to LCS

DES MOINES, IA, March 10, 2009 – LightEdge, the leading hosted services partner dedicated to the full breadth of communications and IT needs for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), today announced that the members of Resiliency Solutions, a renowned Business Continuity and Resiliency Planning consulting service have joined LCS (LightEdge Consulting Services).  The combination of skills will allow the company to offer its business customers additional insight and “best practices” regarding risk mitigation, continuity planning, IT reliability, and redundancy.

While Business Continuity and Contingency Planning practices have been active among large companies for years, it has become a rapidly growing trend among small and medium-sized businesses that view information technology as a vital component of their business.  In cases where technology downtime would cause loss of business revenue, a major impact to staff productivity or loss to investors, a clearly defined and actionable Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan is an essential part of the business plan.

“The Resiliency Solutions team (now the LCS Business Continuity team) has a very methodical and systematic approach to Business Continuity that will mesh well with both LightEdge’s hosted service offerings and LCS’s premises-based consulting solutions,” said Jeff Springborn, president and COO of LightEdge.  “As businesses rely more heavily on information technology, it is essential for them to design their IT and communications systems for maximum resiliency and understand how to keep critical operations available during an unforeseen business interruption.”

LCS will now offer Business Continuity services, such as:

• Business Impact Analysis – Information gathering and formal inspection to determine the businesses risk factors and attempt to monetize the cost of the risk vs. the cost to mitigate.
• Continuity Planning – Planning related to the human and operational reactions to an unforeseen business interruption.
• Disaster Recovery Planning – Planning focused on redundancies and recovery options related to the company’s mission-critical applications, hardware and communications.
• Scenario Drills/Exercises – Reinforcement of the plan’s execution through structured, facilitated exercises, by gathering business unit and IT teams in a room to play out the response and recovery actions to a hypothetical event
• Maintenance Programs – Incremental ongoing updates to the BC plan to ensure that it meets the company’s changing need.

“Business Continuity consulting is a perfect fit addition to the services that LightEdge currently offers,” said Perry Depew, Certified Recovery Planner for LCS.  “LightEdge customers have already demonstrated their understanding and interest in business continuity by embracing hosted services.  We look forward to strengthening their plans and helping them move to the next level of resiliency.”

LCS operates nationally but will focus its efforts in the upper Midwest: Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois.

About Resiliency Solutions
One of the premiere Midwest Business Continuity specialists, Resiliency Solutions has helped hundreds of clients assess their business continuity risk, create a plan to mitigate them, exercise and maintain the plans to make sure that they are both understood by the staff and effective.

About LCS
LightEdge Consulting Services (LCS) is uniquely positioned as the only communications and IT consultant with the vision and knowledge to bridge the gap between premises-based and hosted technology environments.  The company’s experience with Fortune-500, SMB and hosted environments provides the insight necessary to develop “best practice” solutions for its customers.  For more information, visit www.lightedgeconsulting.com.

About LightEdge
LightEdge is the only hosted services partner fully dedicated to providing a full breadth of communications and IT services to small and medium-sized businesses looking for a better way to focus on their core business, not the technology that supports it.  For more information, visit www.lightedge.com.

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