Continuity of your IT environment and business systems, even when you are on holiday

You keep your IFS environment running through the holidays by deciding beforehand who picks up incidents and who monitors the system. Also agree who talks to IFS on your behalf, and how quickly you are back after an outage.

What IFS itself takes on depends on where your environment runs. In IFS Cloud Services, IFS restores the production environment itself, against fixed recovery objectives (RPO and RTO). If you host IFS yourself or with another provider, back-ups and recovery are yours.

Where does continuity break down when your team is on holiday?

Usually with people and arrangements, rarely with the software. Situations an IT manager will recognise:

• The key user who knows IFS best is away for three weeks, and IFS has never heard of their deputy.
• An integration or batch job fails overnight, and nobody notices until the first user rings.
• IFS proposes a fix, but nobody answers the request to accept it.
• There are back-ups, but nobody knows how quickly they would get you running again.
• The contract states an availability figure, but not what counts as an outage.

Review the division of tasks for applications, databases, integrations and (cloud) infrastructure regularly, not just before the summer break.

How quickly does IFS restore your IFS Cloud environment after an outage?

For IFS Cloud, the target is twelve hours. The IFS support policy (version 2026-02) calls it a recovery objective rather than a guarantee. After an outage, IFS restores production from the most recent successful back-up, against two targets. The recovery point objective (RPO) is the maximum data loss; the recovery time objective (RTO) is the time until the environment is back.

• IFS Cloud: RPO four hours, RTO twelve hours.
• IFS Applications 10: RPO eight hours, RTO 24 hours.
• IFS FSM and IFS PSO: RPO one hour, RTO sixteen hours.

That RPO assumes a disaster that destroys every back-up in the production data centre. IFS notes that the data centre itself holds several back-ups.

IFS also offers High Availability as a separate service, depending on the service option in your contract. If a zone within the region fails, the target is an RPO under one minute and an RTO under five minutes. If the whole region goes down, IFS restores from back-ups in a second region, with the same four and twelve hours.

IFS counts as an outage only the time during which no user at all can log in to the production environment. Scheduled maintenance and downtime you start yourself do not count. A stalled integration or a failed batch job is therefore not an outage in the policy’s sense.

Such a failure falls outside the recovery objectives and your contract’s availability figure. Someone other than IFS has to spot it, in August too. That is the job of monitoring.

You decide how much data loss and how long a recovery your business can absorb. If twelve hours is too long for your production, check whether High Availability is part of your service option.

What stays with you if you host IFS yourself?

Everything that keeps the environment running. If IFS runs on-premises or with another cloud provider, IFS calls it a remote deployment, under the Gold or Platinum support plan. You then operate the installation package from IFS together with the database. The support policy places all operational services with you, including:

• database monitoring and system performance;
• back-up and restoration, and disaster recovery;
• cloning environments and hardware maintenance;
• deploying the code IFS delivers.

The recovery objectives in the policy apply only to IFS Cloud Services. With your own hosting, you agree RPO and RTO with your hosting provider or your own team. Have them rehearse a restore, because a back-up nobody has ever restored is an assumption.

Start with what your organisation can and wants to do itself. Then decide what to outsource and what that provider must be able to do. Outsourcing everything asks something different of a partner than working alongside your own competence centre.

At SPIE Nederland, Arvato Systems looked after the Azure infrastructure, Eqeep the service desk and application management, and SPIE kept control. Read the SPIE story.

How do you stop an IFS case stalling during the holidays?

Check before the break who IFS knows and who will answer IFS’s questions. What IFS expects of your key user, and who may stand in, is covered in our article on in-house application management.

Three rules in the policy make an absent key user risky:

• While IFS waits for an answer, input or approval from you, the service-level clock stops.
• You have fourteen calendar days to respond to a proposed resolution, with a reminder halfway. If nobody responds, the resolution counts as accepted and IFS closes the case. A closed case cannot be reopened.
• IFS provides support during Service Hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the working week of the country on your order form. Only under Platinum and Cloud Support can you reach IFS around the clock, for priority 1 and 2.

You can ask IFS for an extension if you need more time. Support plans and SLAs are covered in our article on IFS maintenance and support.

Well-trained deputies make fewer mistakes and need less support, outside the holidays too. Arranging a key user’s succession is covered in the article on retaining IFS knowledge.

Who watches your IFS environment when nobody is looking?

Someone who sees failures outside office hours too, with a named owner for every alert. That can be your own on-call rota or a partner.

Eqeep monitors your IFS environment around the clock, from batch jobs and integrations to back-up status, and escalates automatically when something deviates. Senior engineers pick up critical incidents immediately; the rest goes through Eqeep’s service desk. We flag the signals, and your team decides impact and priority.

After a health check, we report within a week on the risks we see in your environment. See how Eqeep monitors your IFS environment.

What should you arrange before the holidays?

Six arrangements, each with an owner.

• The key user registers deputies and delegates with IFS by name.
• The IT manager records who may accept a proposed IFS resolution within the fourteen days.
• The IT manager checks whether your support plan covers priority 1 and 2 outside Service Hours.
• If you host IFS yourself, your hosting provider confirms the date of the last restore test.
• Every monitoring alert gets an owner and a stand-in who can be reached.
• The key user reviews open IFS cases and hands them over before leaving.

How does your environment stay stable as IFS changes?

By staying within the releases IFS supports, and watching your integrations at every move. If an environment in IFS Cloud Services falls too far behind, incidents fall outside the service levels and IFS no longer guarantees availability. See how far behind you may fall.

What can a partner not arrange for you?

The recovery objectives of IFS Cloud Services. IFS restores that production environment itself, and no partner can change the RPO and RTO in the IFS support policy. The key user also remains a role inside your own organisation, because IFS requires one whatever the support plan.

Questions about the continuity of your IFS environment

What are the RPO and RTO for IFS Cloud?

The IFS support policy (version 2026-02) sets an objective of four hours RPO and twelve hours RTO for IFS Cloud in standard IFS Cloud Services. With IFS High Availability, the target when one zone fails is an RPO under one minute and an RTO under five minutes. If the whole region goes down, IFS restores from back-ups in a second region, with the same four-hour and twelve-hour objectives.

Who takes the back-ups if you host IFS yourself?

You do, or the provider you outsource it to. In a remote deployment, the IFS support policy places back-up, restoration, disaster recovery and database monitoring with the customer.

What happens to an IFS case while your key user is on holiday?

If nobody responds to a proposed resolution within fourteen calendar days, IFS closes the case. So name deputies in advance and make sure IFS knows them.

Is IFS Support available around the clock?

Only for priority 1 and 2 under Platinum and Cloud Support. Otherwise IFS provides support from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on working days. The IFS Service Center portal for registering cases is normally available at all times.

What should you arrange for your IFS environment before the summer?

Register deputies with IFS and agree who may accept a resolution. Check whether your support plan covers priority 1 and 2 outside Service Hours. If you host IFS yourself, have a restore tested. Give every monitoring alert an owner and review open cases.

Tell us where you stand with IFS. You get one conversation and a clear next step. Bring along where your environment runs and who your key user and deputies are. Discuss your IFS question.