acilities that can be provisioned: Cold site: This form of facility is the least costly method of maintaining an alternate site. The reference to coldness is in a way related to the time taken to get the site up and running from its cold or inert state. Cold sites take a maximum time to become fully operational. In terms of IT infrastructure, the site could take time to build up services to the level that the functioning site was providing before it can handle the services by itself. CHAPTER 5 NETWORK ROADMAP EVOLUTION Warm site: A warm site could be partially equipped with required service and facilities SO that it can take over the responsibilities of an active site in a short span of time, which may be a matter of a few hours. Warm sites are more costly to maintain compared to cold sites. Hot site: A hot site is the most resilient way of maintaining an alternate site. A hot site is normally completely in synch with the primary site and can take over responsibilities very much in real time. A hot site is very costly to maintain as services and infrastructure need to be brought up and maintained to be a complete and online backup for the primary site. The site that is selected as the primary alternate should be decided based on the criticality of the services and the cost of not providing service. This could help in assessing the tradeoff between the costs incurred by a lack of continuity VS. the cost of setting up an appropriate alternate site. Cultural Encouragement to Embrace Futuristic and Even Fantastic Scenarios You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink English proverb The processes described in this chapter are aimed primarily at helping an organization improve its ability to handle challenging situations. Processes are a way to achieve a shared goal: a common language to help different people understand the issues involved in a joint venture and a common path to achieve collective results. But processes alone do not guarantee anything. Processes are only as effective as the efforts of th