Preparation is a business’ best friend because disasters can strike at any time. Today’s companies need uninterrupted access to their data in order to perform their regular activities. To bolster data security and mitigate the risks associated with the inability to access data in connection with unexpected disruptions of service, smart businesses are implementing disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solutions.
In case of an emergency – including fire, flood, a power outage, theft or cyberattack – an effective disaster recovery plan is crucial to a company’s survival. According to a report from the Federal Management Agency (FEMA), 40 percent of businesses do not reopen following a disaster. Similar statistics from the US Small Business Administration indicate that 90% of businesses fail within two years after being struck by a disaster. Minimizing downtime and data loss in the face of disaster help decrease financial losses, service interruptions, customer complaints, and may just be the difference between survival and extinction.
In the past, setting up a disaster recovery system was an expensive undertaking. This required large investments in redundant hardware and servers, as well as data center costs and maintenance. Today organizations have more cost-effective solutions to choose from. Welcome to the era of DRaaS.
What Is DRaaS?
DRaaS relies on a third-party to manage the back-up, replication and storage of critical data off site. It protects companies in case of problems effecting their primary servers and physical backup systems. By maintaining a backup of data and secondary IT resources in the cloud, DRaaS can get critical systems back up and running quickly, allowing your company to “keep the lights on.” Your mission critical workloads can be fully replicated because DRaaS has computing, storage, and networking capacity on scalable cloud servers.
What Are the Advantages of DRaaS?
With the advent of cloud computing, many of the technical barriers to entry have diminished, if not disappeared. Now, with DRaaS, organizations of all sizes can benefit from cost-effective, secure, flexible, and fast data recovery.
There are four clear benefits to using a cloud-based disaster recovery system..
Cost-Effectiveness
Disaster recovery is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity. Thanks to cloud technology, it’s also a realistic measure for businesses to take. It’s no longer necessary for a company to either purchase or lease off-site disaster recovery sites or build, test, or maintain a data recovery environment at their own expense. DRaaS costs a fraction of traditional, on-premises backup and restoration methods. This also means that disaster recovery solution costs shift from being a capital expense to a tax-friendlier operating expense.
Security
Now, medium – and even small – companies can fit infrastructure redundancy and data replication into their IT budget. And they really should make it a priority. This is because DRaaS is like digital insurance in the event of a disaster. DRaaS can be designed to use encryption and deliver the same level of protection for sensitive information that meets HITECH compliance and FDA requirements.
But, as a cloud service, DraaS can offer an even higher level of security. Unlike physical disaster recovery systems, DRaaS can utilize more than one data center for continuity in any conditions. Plus, the geographic distance between a company’s office and its disaster recovery environment guards against the same emergency from affecting both the primary and backup systems simultaneously. In many industries, this security could also represent a great competitive advantage.
Speed
Use of the cloud makes it possible to quickly recover business-critical infrastructure. If a company’s system goes down, aggressive DRaaS solutions enable activities to continue with minimal downtime. By protecting and restoring information and IT resources, this type of disaster recovery service is an invaluable tool for saving time and money. This is essential protection for businesses that can’t afford to lose data or precious days, hours, and minutes of operation time.
Flexibility
Like other popular cloud solutions, DRaaS is flexible. Performance factors – and consequently their related costs – can be customized to fit the needs and requirements of a company and their IT systems. The budget can be allocated according to which applications and servers are considered more or less critical to disaster recovery. When required, the DRaaS system can even provide parallel deployments for full redundancy.
Related article: How Data Backups and Disaster Recovery Work Together.
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