The threat of natural disasters or other business interruptions such as power outages and viruses means that companies need robust backup and disaster recovery solutions for their data environment. Often, however, backup and disaster recovery services are conflated, and businesses end up with solutions that don't necessarily offer all the functionality they actually need. To ensure the enterprise IT environment is fully recoverable in the wake of a disaster, companies can benefit from working with a managed services provider to develop a customized plan that fits their needs.
One common misconception about disaster recovery is that it offers nothing appreciably different from a backup or cloud storage solution, a recent MSP Mentor article explained. Most companies already have some form of backup solution, perhaps hosted in the cloud, which may make a separate recovery service seem superfluous.
However, simply relying on backup storage doesn't take the need for getting key applications running again into account, and it can quickly become expensive or difficult to manage as the volume of data increases, Sundar Raman, CTO of Perpetuuiti Technosoft Services, noted in a recent interview with CIOL. This complexity can make shortcuts even more tempting.
"CIOs tasked with addressing business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery issues are keen to achieve quick wins, and the 'tick box' audit approach, which tries to copy successful strategies used elsewhere, is often adopted without consideration of the suitability," Raman explained.
To combat this problem, companies can benefit from working with a dedicated managed service provider to craft a customized solution that fits their specific needs. By determining the best plan to meet recovery time objectives for various applications and data while also working within a manageable budget, companies can establish a disaster recovery plan that gives them more than basic backup without overextending themselves.