Why Cisco picked a Blue Bell firm to cope with disasters

Cisco Systems, the computer-networking equipment maker, has renewed its three-year contract with Strategic BCP, a 25-person, Blue Bell-based software firm, to use its ResilienceOne platform, which tracks people, facilities and systems to speed decision-making in disaster-recovery and business-interruption situations.

Cisco first picked Strategic BCP in 2013, Keith Cantando, Manager of Global Risk and Resiliency Management at Cisco, told me.

"And the cost is not huge... There's annual fees. They have a very good help desk and support model. so there is not a huge amount of day-to-day IT support needed. I was able to eliminate 120,000 out of my personnel budget -- we shifted them elsewhere in the company. We're now in Version 8 and it just about runs by itself. I'm very pleased." (Corrected, a previous version posted what BCP said was an incorrect price.)

Big as Cisco is, why not build its own? "There's no silver bullet for business continuity tools," Cantando said. "I could (customize) something. But this is scaleable. We usually go year-to-year with smaller (software) providers. But this company is pretty high up on the Gartner Magic Quadrant [of efficient software managers]. It's great working with small organizations, sometimes."