Disaster Recovery (DR) came when the digital transformation peaked, and the need to recover from a disaster was almost immediate.
Cloud Disaster Recovery is an ideal solution for business continuity during disasters such as power outages, network disruptions, natural calamities, etc.
Living with downtime in today’s world is not an option. Organizations must be quick to solve this. Lost hours in downtime can cost a company reputation, customer dissatisfaction, and an endless chain of negative points.
Hence, the Disaster Recovery!
But is Disaster Recovery just a solution to an unfortunate event, or is there something more to it?
Disaster Recovery can not only remedy downtime issues but also add value to several aspects of a company’s structure. Creating a disaster recovery plan will put you at the forefront of the competition and help you solve some futuristic issues well in advance.
Following is the list of benefits that an ideal Disaster recovery strategy can present to your organization:
What can Disaster Recovery do?
Disaster Recovery can offer a range of benefits to different organizations:
- Increase organizational, and technical expertise
- Create a customer-centric platform
- Increase reliability
- Cloud/Datacenter migration
- Enhance collaboration within an organization
Five ways Disaster Recovery (DR) adds value to your business operations:
1) SWOT Analysis
It is always important to assess your Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy, whether you are already employing a traditional plan or signing up for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS). To begin with, you must assess the challenges that lie ahead and what could potentially go wrong in the future.
The process also entails clearly defining the Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) in an SLA.
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
This is the targeted duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster to avoid unpleasant consequences from a break in business continuity.
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
This is the age of files that must be recovered from backup storage for business continuity if a computer, system, or network experiences failure.
However, one must ask a few questions before creating a disaster recovery strategy. They are:
- What are the potential threats?
- To what extent can these threats concern the organization, and where?
- Are our facilities secure enough? How good is your organization’s network connectivity and power?
- What kind of impact would any resulting disruption have on the business?
- Which systems and applications are most important? Are they part of the organization or stored at another location?
- How are they built? Are they centralized or decentralized?
- How long can a disaster last, and what implications can it have?
2) Associating with a Reliable DR Provider
Once you are sure about proceeding, the next step is to find a reliable DR solutions provider (AWS, Azure, GCP, and More). Reliability is an underlying element of any business’s success.
Most cloud disaster recovery services providers assure organizations that they will be available to provide 24/7 customer support. But what if they fail to do so in the event of an extreme event?
Being able to fall back and resume failover can give you an edge in a competitive market filled with enterprises like yours that are striving hard to increase their brand’s credibility and keep the flow of customers coming in.
Therefore, it is essential that you do proper research, study the provider you are interacting with, and have all your questions and queries clearly discussed on paper.
4) Resuming Operations With Ease
A solid DR plan can strengthen transformational-based efficiencies. For example, if you want to transfer your data to a new data center or a hybrid cloud environment, then DR can prove highly beneficial. It saves time by setting up alternative versions of applications and facilitates normal functioning without any discrepancies.
5) Collaboration in Crisis
While a disaster can result in business downtime, it can devastate internal functioning, resulting in friction between departments in the organization.
As part of the DR plan, it becomes important to communicate and seek input from all the key stakeholders within an organization. A well-structured DR plan calls for a relaxed approach during a disaster.
6) Central focus on Customer
Focusing on customer operations, an organization’s assessment plan should involve a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) that provides insight into the impacts of a disaster, both internally and externally.
It is important to note that the impact on the customer can differ based on the industry or organization. For example, if an e-commerce platform experiences downtime, every second may cost the company, its customer base, and trust.
Therefore, it is essential to assess the amount of time and value that can be lost in downtime well in advance!
The Future of Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
According to the Research and Markets DR market forecast, the DRaaS market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 17.29 percent during 2018-23 with a market share of up to USD 3,294.361 million by the end of the forecast period.
The global market for DRaaS is driven by the need for backup services for an organization’s data.
Furthermore, DRaaS presents fast recovery, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility while offering automation capability, making it a suitable and reliable option for enterprise data security.
It has been observed that small and large enterprises are employing DR to their benefit, propelling market growth and increasing the demand for these solutions. However, factors such as compatibility of specific applications in the cloud environment and dependence on DRaaS providers to implement the solution correctly stand as challenges in its market growth.
Disaster Recovery has proved to be an ideal solution in a fast-changing market and fierce competition, but it goes a step ahead by adding value to an organization’s operations with its suite of benefits.
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