Return to Operation

Return to Operation (RTO) is an ITIL term which describes the point at which business impact(s) resulting from an Incident have been mitigated such that users are able to perform their critical business processes unimpeded.

RTO does not necessarily imply that the root cause of an Incident has been identified and/or resolved, but that the business impact caused by the Incident has been mitigated. A workaround may be implemented to achieve this end.

The time to achieve RTO is measured from the beginning of the business impact until that business impact has been mitigated.