Selecting the right disaster recovery solution for your business can be a trying task. With data security and recovery such an important part of your business’s continuity, DR is not something to take lightly. This decision involves many factors. When we consider the most important factors of DR – recovery, security and redundancy- it is not difficult to understand why many companies are making the shift to the cloud.
5 Reasons Why you Should Invest in Cloud-Based DR
In addition to the numerous benefits of deploying a cloud-based solution, cloud DR (disaster recovery as a Service or DRaaS) offers users specific advantages over alternative solutions.
1. Legacy DR doesn’t cut it
Legacy BDR solutions are often complex and assembled from a variety of vendors, making them slow and difficult to manage. Cloud solutions, on the other hand, work to simplify the backup and DR process with set it and forget it backup methods. You no longer need to manage multiple vendors and multiple backup cycles.
2. Rapid Recovery
When your company is experiencing downtime, the only thing that matters is getting your business back online fast. With cloud-based DR your environment can be easily failed over to the cloud to get your business back up and running in an emergency.
3. Geographic Redundancy
It is a best practice of backup and DR to ensure you have multiple copies of your data, but if these copies are located in the same place it doesn’t do you much good if a tornado hits. It is important to ensure that you have a copy located at least 500 miles away to ensure geographic redundancy. With cloud BDR solutions, you can back up your data to multiple locations and easily restore.
4. Cost-effective
For companies that do not currently have a strong solution in place, cloud backup and DR is fast, secure and reliable; and it is also affordable. There is little to no upfront capital cost and no expensive hardware purchase involved. This allows you to move your CapEX to OpEX and focus more on operating your business and less on troubleshooting your DR environment.
5. Return on Investment
Traditionally, the reason that companies did not invest in a backup or DR solution is because of the time and money it took to deploy an on premise solution. We have already touched on the fact that a cloud solution is more cost effective than the alternative, but it is also important to consider the ROI of BDR.
Consider the impact of downtime on your business. Will you loose sales if you are taken offline? Will your customers choose your competitors? Will you be able to operate if you cannot access your data? How much revenue will this cost you? How will it impact your reputation? What if you were down for 1 hour? What if you were down for a day?
Studies show that a majority of companies that do not have a backup or DR solution in place will never recover from the loss of data in the event of downtime. When we think about all the ways that downtime can destroy our reputation and potentially our business, the RIO of disaster recovery solutions is easy to see.
The Bottom Line
When you evaluate all of the reasons why your business should shift to the cloud, you will undoubtedly uncover many more reasons than those outlined above. Not only are cloud solutions a catalyst for growth, they help companies gain a competitive advantage by enabling their employees to innovate more and troubleshoot less. Selecting a cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solution will give your business additional peace of mind and ensure your data is protected.
