When disaster strikes, DRaaS providers can help keep your systems online
“Let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everyone else, we don’t crash EVER!” Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg exclaimed in the film The Social Network. “If those servers are down for even a day, our entire reputation is irreversibly destroyed!”
While Zuckerberg’s sense of urgency was certainly extreme, any company that serves its customers or employees with a digital system knows just how critical it is to avoid downtime. Beyond inconvenience and damage to a company’s brand of reliability, every hour of downtime comes at significant cost. While this figure will vary widely depending on each business’s unique environment, there is no doubt how serious a liability downtime can be.
Despite understanding their risk, however, many small businesses simply cannot afford to build and maintain the contingency plans they need to back up their infrastructure. That’s where DRaaS comes into play. By outsourcing their disaster recovery process, companies can leverage experts’ experience and resources in developing and carrying out a disaster recovery plan that protects them when the unexpected strikes.
“Failover systems assume all operational responsibilities if their primary servers go down.”
Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service providers replicate and host organizations’ servers in an off-site secure and encrypted cloud computing environment, providing a backup that can kick into gear if a disaster should occur. Unlike data storage backups, these failover systems assume all operational responsibilities if their primary servers go down.
DRaaS providers can offer companies contingency against both natural and human-triggered events. For example, by choosing a DRaaS vendor located away from a company’s primary data center, they can ensure they still have a working system even if a flood or earthquake knocks out their local infrastructure. Or, if a company experiences a security breach in its main facility, it could switch operations to the off-site location until the issue is resolved. In the managed service provider space we have seen a number of companies close their doors with little or no notice to customers. Having your disaster recovery with another provider mitigates this risk and also gives you leverage at renewal.
At ARG, we work to connect companies with the best vendors for their business needs while saving them up to 40 percent on their IT costs. To get started, contact one of our expert IT consultants today.
