Every business, no matter the size of its operation, needs a backup and disaster recovery (BDR) plan. A BDR plan ensures that your company can resume its operation as soon as possible after a disastrous event that results in data loss. Not only does it give your business a better chance of bouncing back after a natural disaster such as a flood or tornado, it also ensures that you’ll reduce the negative impacts of hardware failure, human error, and cyberattacks on your enterprise.
There are many small business owners who forget or choose to forgo setting up a BDR plan. They see it as nothing more than a significant expense or as a task that’s essential only to IT companies — until they actually need it. The truth, however, is that there are plenty of budget-friendly BDR options for SMEs. In particular, a disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solution is a reliable yet cost-effective backup option for companies of all sizes.
Simply put, a DRaaS solution is a cloud-hosted solution that replicates an organization’s systems and data, serving as a failover in case disaster strikes the site where systems and data are primarily hosted. Here are 5 reasons why a cloud DRaaS solution might be a great fit for your business.
It Is More Than Just a Backup Plan for SMB’s
A cloud DRaaS does more than back up your company’s data and applications. It’s capable of maintaining a replica of your organization’s entire IT ecosystem on the cloud. In the event of a disaster, you can count on your cloud DRaaS solution to give you access to that replica so that you can continue your normal business operations even while you’re still in the process of recovery. This, in turn, reduces the damage that a disaster can inflict on your company and prevent further loss of profit.
It Is More Affordable and Scalable
Compared to other BDR options, cloud DRaaS solutions do not require your company to invest in hardware. You simply have to subscribe to the service to ensure that your business has a backup solution. This, in turn, gives you the option to shop for a DRaaS provider who can give you the best value for the money. At the same time, you also have the option to choose the elements of your system, data, and applications that will be replicated to the cloud. In the event that your company experiences growth in the near future, you can simply upgrade your DRaaS subscription to ensure that your BDR plan still meets your business needs.
It Automatically Backs Up Critical Systems, Data, and Applications
Backing up an organization’s entire IT ecosystem is a time-consuming activity. This is a task that needs to be done regularly to ensure that the cloud has the latest version of the company’s files and systems. Not all SMB’s can afford to lose time or manpower to attend to this specific task. This is not a problem with cloud DRaaS (for most vendors), because the service is configured to automatically create a backup for your applications and workloads.
It Can Be Key to Achieving Compliance without Added Costs
If your SMB is part of an industry that is subjected to strict regulatory guidelines, having access to a cloud DRaaS solution will help you achieve compliance easily. More likely than not, DRaaS providers adhere to high standards of security in order to protect their customers from cyberattacks. As such, users of these services also benefit from their provider’s top-notch security features. This means they don’t have to invest heavily in redundant security and compliance solutions and efforts.
It Is Central to a Disaster Recovery Plan
Last but not least, having a cloud DRaaS to back up your company’s data ensures that you’ll have full control over which aspects of your business should be prioritized during the recovery process. Depending on the elements you chose to replicate to the cloud, it’s possible to reinstate your virtual machines (VM) first or other specific clusters in your IT environment over other aspects of your business.
Disaster Preparedness: It’s a Matter of When, Not If
Having a disaster recovery plan is as essential to ensure that your business has the right insurance coverage. Forward-looking business owners appreciate the level of safety and security that a cloud DRaaS solution provides to their livelihood, especially now that many parts of the world are facing increasing levels of disaster risk and cybersecurity threats.
Now, more than ever, you need to anticipate the hurdles that you’ll inevitably face while conducting your company’s day-to-day operations, and part of this is taking steps to control or reduce the impact of these threats on your livelihood. If you don’t have a BDR plan for your business yet, check out cloud DRaaS solutions and ensure that the systems, applications, and data that are central to your business operations are all properly backed up.
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