Disaster recovery (DR) is the ability to handle site failures with minimal disruptions to a business. This is an essential capability for every organization, regardless of its size, sector or location! However, typically high costs and complexities associated with traditional DR keep businesses from implementing plans. Almost 60% of businesses don’t have one in place today. Availability and reliability are two of the most important aspects of any successful business initiative, and any disruptions or outages can seriously wreak damage on an organization’s operations and reputation. In fact, a whopping 93% of businesses experiencing data center failures lasting 10+ days go bankrupt within one year, while 43% of companies that experience a disaster never reopen. Those are scary statistics, and they speak to why disaster recovery is so necessary.
Disaster recovery in the cloud ensures that business data is recoverable and protected at all times. With industry-leading encryption and security practices in place, cloud-based recovery is the most logical way to go about disaster recovery today. 70% of businesses plan to pursue cloud-based disaster recovery in the next year.
With cloud DR, a company’s data, applications and other assets are stored off-site in the provider’s servers. The organization then accesses the service via the cloud. With this setup, localized disasters like hurricanes, floods or tornadoes that affect a business and its location won’t also affect the its data. And if one resource becomes unavailable in the primary site, it essentially reroutes to another available site, leading to high availability. Cloud disaster recovery safeguards data in the cloud and gets businesses up and running in a matter of minutes or hours in a disaster scenario, rather than days.
There are a couple of ways that businesses could experience the same level of protection as cloud disaster recovery, but neither is very viable for all businesses. An organization could maintain its own off-site data center dedicated to recovery, or physically transport backup disks or tapes to a storage facility. The first option is extremely expensive and would require a lot of dedicated time from a business’ IT team. The second option is just extremely vulnerable, and therefore, not worth the risk. Neither can compare to the overall protection and cost efficiency that cloud disaster recovery provides.
Cloud computing avoids high costs and issues by offloading most of the responsibilities to professional experts, like RapidScale’s cloud team. A cloud provider offers great scalability, decreased disaster recovery costs, and, of course, the recovery a business needs seamlessly and automatically. Cloud DR just makes life easier!
Where you put your primary and backup disaster resources does matter. A cloud environment provides businesses with a safe, reliable infrastructure, and data that’s accessible from wherever in the world authorized users are. A reliable provider will ensure no less than 99.9999% uptime – in fact, RapidScale offers 100%. Disaster recovery in the cloud helps businesses avoid building a secondary site. It’s necessary for businesses that require aggressive RPO and RTO. It can be used to fully replace a traditional disaster recovery solution, actually enhancing the protection put in place. Cloud DR protects all areas of a business, including its remote offices and departments. Companies prefer cloud DR for its low cost (59%), ease of use (52%) and compatibility (48%).
Disaster recovery in the cloud protects an organization’s most critical assets. Designing, deploying and maintaining a cloud disaster recovery solution is a complex project. The level of expertise going into it has a huge impact on the effectiveness of the solution, and that’s why a cloud provider like RapidScale is key. Our cloud computing effectively maximizes the benefits of disaster recovery, delivering protection, driving down costs, and freeing up the business’ IT department to pursue more strategic business projects. The cloud DR market is expected to grow at a 21% CAGR over the next several years, and by 2020, 90% of disaster recovery will run in the cloud. (451 Research Market Monitor)
Want to learn more about our approach to disaster recovery in the cloud? Learn about our CloudRecovery solution here.
