DRaaS: Why Business Can’t Survive Without It
DRaaS: Why Business Can’t Survive Without It
Here’s the reality of being unprepared to recover from downtime or disaster: 40% of businesses don’t reopen after disaster strikes,
and 25% fail within a year. Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) can prevent your business from becoming a DR statistic, with asa-
service access to cloud-based backup and recovery aligned with your needs and budget. Read this education brief to learn how
you can leverage DRaaS to help your business survive — and thrive — in a world where change is constant and unpredictability is
the new normal.
Volatility is here to stay
Gone are the days when companies could take for granted the safety, security, and continuity of their businesses. One needn’t look any further than the events of 2020 to understand that contingency plans are mission-critical to resilient operations. Consider the fires and floods that destroyed businesses, the rolling electricity blackouts caused by power grids being unable to meet energy demand, and the shift to remote work in today’s ever-evolving landscape.
Business vulnerability is at an all-time high, and not just from downtime caused by unexpected and uncontrollable events. Ransomware is getting more sophisticated, targeting critical data for profit. The adoption of remote and hybrid operations has made data more vulnerable to compromise and loss. In fact, there was a 72% increase in ransomware in 2020 and a 50% increase in mobile vulnerability as remote employees accessed data through their devices and networks.
Unexpected downtime can be crippling to a business. According to a recent survey, 37% of small and medium-sized companies that experienced it lost customers. Despite this, 61% of businesses don’t have an incident response plan, with many saying it’s because they don’t have time to research solutions. 28% of SMBs said they’re not prepared for downtime because their IT teams are stretched too thin.
Disaster recovery challenges:
Complexity and resources
Digital transformation has created dynamic, accelerated business environments. Now, physical and virtual data is spread across data centers, clouds, remote or branch office locations, and endpoints with different levels of security — think Internet of Things devices, printers, and sensors, to name a few. Considering that 1.8 zettabytes of data will be generated worldwide each year by 2025, a new approach to disaster recovery is needed. Today’s disaster recovery planning takes expertise to align to recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO), as well as satisfy compliance laws, like those associated with SOC 1, HIPAA, ISO/IEC 27001, and FedRAMP.
Many companies rely too heavily on local-only backups or have cobbled together recovery plans using a mix of technologies to capture, store, secure, and recover data in the event of a disruption. But that can leave gaps in protection that could result in data loss. Worse yet, many companies lack the time and resources to test their failover and recovery regularly. And when new technologies are adopted, disaster recovery plans need to be brought up to speed.
Expertise needed for reliable recovery:
-Disaster recovery testing
-Troubleshooting backup failure
-Ensuring backup and cloud sync
-Proactively resolving issues
-Aligning disaster recovery with budget and SLA goals
DRaaS: Purpose-built cloud for recovery and continuity
DRaaS speeds disaster recovery with replication. And an outsourced technology solution provider (TSP) simplifies DR by hosting servers and providing virtual failover to cloud infrastructure should downtime or disaster occur. Unlike cobbled-together, DIY DR solutions, DRaaS is built from the ground up for resiliency and continuity, with off-site, redundant protection for physical and virtual systems to a secure cloud for continuity that satisfies stakeholders and compliance. Some DRaaS solutions can recover data, virtualize machines, or even fail over an entire site and network in minutes.
DRaaS proactively ensures businesses can operate without interruption in the event of data loss or disruption. It speeds recovery while reining in costs, with affordable monthly pricing based on recovery needs to a secure, fault-tolerant cloud. Here, cloud storage is customized to business requirements and SLAs, and it’s centrally managed through an online portal. With access to cloud backup data from anywhere, companies can ensure up to 99.9999% uptime even in worst-case scenarios.5 Some vendors even offer pre-stage, site-wide failover processes for testing and executing failover with a single click, drastically reducing labor tasks for IT teams.
Causes of Unexpected Business Downtime:
53% Software failure
52% Cybersecurity attack
38% Hardware failure
36% Human error
30% Natural disaster
24% Hardware theft
Did You Know? It costs businesses $5,600 for every minute of downtime.
DRaaS Benefits
Expertise: A TSP handles disaster recovery testing, updates, and recovery, so IT staff can focus on business.
Cost control: Flat-rate pricing based on needs avoids unexpected recovery costs.
Simplicity: A TSP handles disaster recovery testing, updates, and recovery, so IT staff can focus on business.
Resiliency: A TSP handles disaster recovery testing, updates, and recovery, so IT staff can focus on business.
What to Look for in a DRaaS Approach:
Does it align with your RTO and RPO objectives?
Can you customize recovery costs to fit your budget?
Does it include a secure perimeter against hackers and threats?
Does it charge extra fees at the time of recovery?
Is data safe and 100% fully recoverable?
Can you recover your data to dissimilar hardware or virtual environments?
Can you easily test failover?
Improve Your Resiliency With DRaaS From Cloudfluence
Copyright © 2022 Arcserve (USA), LLC and its affiliates and subsidiaries. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective owners. This document is for your informational purposes only. Arcserve assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, Arcserve provides this document “as is” without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will Arcserve be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if Arcserve is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damage. AD2000XX About Arcserve Arcserve, a global top 5 data protection vendor, provides the broadest set of best-in-class solutions to manage, protect and recover all data workloads, from SMB to enterprise and regardless of location or complexity. Arcserve solutions eliminate complexity while bringing best-in-class, cost-effective, agile, and massively scalable data protection and certainty across all data environments. This includes on-premises, cloud (including DRaaS, BaaS, and Cloud-to-Cloud), hyperconverged, and edge infrastructures. The company’s nearly three decades of award-winning IP, plus a continuous focus on innovation, means that partners and customers, including MSPs, VARs, LARs, and end-users are assured of the fastest route to next-generation data workloads and infrastructures. A 100% channel-centric organization, Arcserve has a presence in over 150 countries, with 19,000 channel partners helping to protect 235,000 customers’ critical data assets. Explore more at arcserve.com and follow @Arcserve on Twitter.
1. Government Technology, “Small Businesses Are a Vital Part of Community Resiliency but Often Overlook Vulnerabilities,” July 2018. 2 Security Magazine, “COVID-19 Pandemic Sparks 72% Ransomware Growth, Mobile Vulnerabilities Grow 50%,” July 2020. 3 Help Net Security, “Unexpected Downtime Is Crippling to Businesses, Causing Revenue Losses,” May 2020. 4 StorageCraft Recovery Zone, “How to Implement a Cost-Effective, Enterprise-Class BDR Solution for Your Small Business,” accessed Oct. 2020. 5 StorageCraft web page, “Ensure Business Continues No Matter What Happens,” accessed Oct. 2020.
