Downtime is expensive and an extended outage can cripple an organization. In addition to the financial costs associated with the loss of customer-facing systems, internal productivity and brand reputation also take a hit when systems are unavailable. Most decision-makers understand the implications of a disaster to their computing environment, but not all of them have the time or resources available to adequately develop and test a recovery plan. 

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) offers businesses of any size a method with which to protect their computing environment from unexpected outages. DRaaS is a cloud computing service model that provides an organization with a complete system backup that can become the production environment in case of a disaster. A business can continue to operate with only a minor outage as the cloud system is accessed by employees and customers.

Why DRaaS Makes Sense for Businesses

Engaging the services of a cloud provider removes some of the major impediments that limit the ability of enterprises to prepare for a disaster. Specifically, DRaaS addresses the following points. 

• Lack of technical expertise - Developing and implementing a disaster recovery plan requires a level of expertise that is not present in many organizations. Access to this expertise is one of the appeals of a DRaaS solution. 

• Insufficient time and resources - Many organizations do not have the time or human resources to develop a robust recovery plan. Cloud providers have dedicated teams that can efficiently and effectively create reliable recovery procedures. 

• Testing - Conducting disaster recovery tests is a critical aspect of verifying that the plan will perform up to expectations when necessary. A cloud environment can be tested on-demand without any impact on the production data center. This is not the case with traditional disaster recovery testing procedures.

Employing a DRaaS solution enables any size organization to protect their computing environment from any type of disaster.

Benefits of DRaaS for SMBs

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) have often neglected disaster recovery preparedness due to the issues previously discussed as well as the costs involved in developing and testing a plan. DRaaS offers these types of organizations a viable solution for protecting their computing assets without blowing up their budgets. The benefits include: 

• No capital expenses are required for the procurement of additional hardware or a recovery site. All that is needed to get started is a subscription to a DRaaS. 

• Critical systems are automatically backed up as part of the recovery plan providing peace of mind that data resources are safe and secure. 

• Recovery speed can be the differentiating factor in the ability of a business to survive a disaster. Cloud recovery offers a fast route to recovery and can get a business back on its feet immediately.

All major cloud providers have some type of DRaaS offering in their portfolio of services. If your enterprise does not currently have a reliable and tested disaster recovery plan, it is time you did and DRaaS offers a streamlined and economical way to do so.