Disaster Recovery as a Service: What you Need to Know
A recent post in Beta News outlines how Disaster Recovery as a Service is growing as an option for organizations looking to deploy a fail-safe to guard against data loss. Author Sam Pudwell explains that this is due to the widespread expansion in enterprise cloud adoption. However, the increase in interest is two-fold, as data volumes are also exploding, creating a perfect storm that is driving companies in the enterprise toward these kinds of solutions. In that, data protection has become a hot-button issue. Here’s a summary of Pudwell’s column with some of my own commentary added.
As the editorial correctly points out, the DRaaS market is widely expected to take off in the coming years, and this is confirmed by some of the biggest research firms in enterprise IT, including Gartner, MarketsandMarkets and Computer Weekly.
The growth of Disaster Recovery as a Service is being driven primarily by the allure of cost savings over traditional Backup and Recovery tools. However, some of the features are also driving intrigue, namely the speed, scalability and security of these offerings. DRaaS solutions also reduce operational complexity, allowing IT to focus on other more pressing tasks while essentially outsourcing their data protection to third-party vendors who can keep a watch on their data for them.
Growth in the DRaaS market does not come without skepticism from some business executives, as organizations fear losing control and visibility of their vital data – and given how necessary data has become to the success of the modern enterprise, that makes sense.
As a relative newcomer to the enterprise Backup and Disaster Recovery tool belt, some hiccups with DRaaS solutions are to be expected. So to ensure that the tool you choose is deployed and working properly, frequent testing is advised. In addition, those currently looking to implement DRaaS plans should focus in on storage, security, and planned downtime, as well as making sure that vital systems are prioritized in order of importance regarding critical business function should a disaster take place.
Earlier this year, Gartner introduced a new Magic Quadrant to their family of comprehensive enterprise IT reports, this one solely focusing on the emergence of the DRaaS market. Click for our coverage of that study.
This post was inspired by an article originally appearing in Beta News.