If your organization hasn’t already thought about disaster recovery (DR), then now is the time. According to Ponemon Institute, outages cost the average company nearly $9,000 per minute. Some companies lose more than $17,000 for every minute their data centers are down. However, outages don’t just incur big price tags. Natural disasters such as floods and fires can destroy your entire data center and erase all your stored files.
As a result, many organizations are shying away from on-site DR strategies and looking instead to the cloud. Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) has become an instrumental part of many companies’ DR plans, since it enlists the help of a third party provider to facilitate effective DR off-site.
Let’s look at some of the reasons why you should consider DRaaS for your organization’s DR strategy:
It’s always on.
Since it’s available through the cloud, DRaaS services are available 24/7. As long as your team has access to the internet, they will be able to connect with your DR solution at any time. This can be crucial is your organization experiences a disaster outside of business hours. With DRaaS, you don’t need to wait until the next morning to restore your resources and get your organization up and running again.
It simplifies DR.
Building and managing your own DR infrastructure can become incredibly complex given all the resources required to keep it running effectively. On-premises DR services require a diverse array of hardware, especially when you factor secondary backup sites into your infrastructure.
Migrating your DR solution into the cloud eliminates nearly all of your in-house hardware needs. As a result, you will no longer need to handle the administration and maintenance of your physical hardware. Your DRaaS provider will oversee all of those responsibilities, leaving you to simply enjoy the benefits of improved DR.
It’s fast.
DRaaS makes it much easier and faster to recover your data than traditional on-site DR solutions. Restoring information from an in-house solution can take days or even longer, leaving you without the vital data you need to run your business until then. DRaaS providers, on the other hand, use data replication and automation tools to restore backups of your information quickly.
Getting your business back online is as simple as downloading your data from the internet. As such, you’ll experience faster recovery point and recovery time objectives, which will allow you to resume business as usual within 15 minutes of a disaster.
It comes with the required expertise.
Implementing your own DR solution isn’t a walk in the park. Without the right skills and expertise under your belt, you could end up wasting money on DR infrastructure that doesn’t fulfill your needs. When implementing a DRaaS solution, however, you will receive all the help you need to maintain an effective DR system. In fact, your provider will handle all of the administrative requirements needed to facilitate efficient DR.
Pursuing DRaaS instead of traditional in-house DR means that your IT team won’t need to go through extra training to maintain your own infrastructure. Moreover, it means that there will be one less process to manage, freeing your team up to focus on other operations and important projects.
It’s a secure way to back up data.
By migrating your DR needs to the cloud, you will be able to guarantee the safety of all your backups. Your DRaaS provider will use the latest and greatest security measures to safeguard their data centers and the backups that you store in them.
Not only do these providers use physical security such as security doors and cameras, but they also rely on countless digital approaches to protect their clients’ data. From encryption services to authentication protocols, DRaaS providers take a layered approach to security that mitigates nearly every threat imaginable.
It’s comprehensive.
On-site DR looks the same for most organizations. Often, DR is a matter of building and maintaining simple off-site backups—the majority of which focus only on critical servers due to barriers in cost. This creates gaps in DR that leaves many companies without backups of all the servers they need to operate.
DRaaS takes a more comprehensive approach to DR, allowing you to create backups of all your servers while adhering to your budget. In many cases, you can also customize your DRaaS solution to your unique business needs. This way, you can build a DR strategy that touches all the bases.
It eliminates worries about DR reliability.
When you make the cloud a central part of your DR planning, you will have fewer worries about the reliability of your DR strategy. Your DRaaS vendor will work closely with you to develop a DR plan that will meet your organization’s needs. They will also test your DR infrastructure on your behalf, both to troubleshoot before launching your services and to ensure that your plan still works as intended over time.
A DRaaS strategy also makes your entire DR strategy more resilient. With a traditional backup system, you will likely only have one data center to supplement your on premise servers. This creates a single point of failure that leaves you more susceptible to disasters and other disruptions. With DRaaS, your provider will house backups of your data in more than one location, making you far more resilient against any potential threat to business continuity.
It saves money.
Building your own DR site is a costly endeavor. Not only will you need to cover the up-front costs of hardware, software, and security, but you will also need to pay for license upgrades and additional storage down the road. Altogether, these costs can make on premise DR too expensive to justify.
DRaaS doesn’t come with any of these expenses. Your provider will maintain all the infrastructure you will use for your DR needs. They will make these resources available to you via a subscription, thereby minimizing your DR spending.