Business continuity solutions are essential for companies that rely on their IT systems. An extended loss of system availability can cause substantial damage to an organization, and in some cases, force a company to go out of business. Companies need to take the proper prescriptions and develop business continuity plans to address all types of unexpected outages.
While the concept of business continuity is not new, the cloud offers a new approach to protecting an organization’s IT assets. Leveraging cloud-based services enables companies of any size to give their IT environment a level of protection formerly reserved for businesses with extensive experience and large budgets.
What Are Business Continuity Solutions?
Business continuity solutions consist of procedures, processes, and technologies implemented to allow a company to recover essential IT functionality after a disruption. The disruption may be caused by a manmade or natural disaster, a cyberattack, or some other type of issue that affects the availability of business-critical systems and data resources.
The following items are essential components of a viable business continuity solution.
- Risk assessment – Companies need to understand the existing threat landscape and the risks it poses to their IT environment and business.
- Continuity planning – Plans should be developed to address restoring mission-critical systems and applications as quickly as possible. This includes identifying the personnel who will be responsible for performing the recoveries.
- Data protection and backup – Backups, including making a set of offsite copies, need to be taken regularly for all important systems.
- Disaster recovery plans – Specific recovery plans must be created for each identified system with restore point and restore time objectives (RPOs and RTOs).
- Incident and crisis management – Teams need to be created to perform incident and crisis management to mitigate the effects of an outage. It is important to establish communication with stakeholders to keep them informed of the situation as it unfolds.
- Training, testing, and plan maintenance – Employees may require training to efficiently perform their roles in recovering critical systems. All elements of the plan should be tested regularly and updated to reflect changes in the IT environment.
Inefficiencies of Traditional Business Continuity Solutions
Business continuity solutions developed using traditional computing resources are saddled with several inefficiencies. These issues may make it impossible for companies without adequate technical and financial resources to protect themselves from a significant disruption to the IT environment.
Expensive recovery sites – Maintaining a dedicated recovery site can be very expensive. Companies need to ensure that adequate resources are available when necessary. This typically involves paying for storage and computing power that may never actually be used to address an IT disruption. Teams may have to travel to the site when performing system recovery.
Inefficient recovery procedures – Traditional backup and recovery solutions designed for business continuity usually store a set of backups offsite on removable media. These backups need to be transported to the recovery site to restore critical systems. The potential for lost time or misplaced media affects the effectiveness of this type of continuity solution.
Lack of flexibility – A traditional business continuity solution is hindered by a lack of flexibility to address new systems, capacity, and applications incorporated into the IT environment. Limitations in the recovery site may force organizations to make difficult decisions regarding which systems they can recover to maintain business operations and serve their customers.
Limited testing opportunities – Testing traditional business continuity solutions typically requires long-term planning dependent on the availability of the recovery site. This limits the amount of testing that can be performed which can negatively affect the organization’s ability to successfully recover to address an actual emergency.
The Benefits of Cloud-Based Business Continuity Solutions
The popularity of cloud-based business continuity solutions is growing due to the advantages they provide over traditional methods. Following are some of the most impactful benefits of using the cloud to protect your business.
- Reduced costs – Companies can save significant amounts of money by opting for cloud-based solutions. Organizations can achieve substantial savings by using the hardware, software, and computing power of a cloud service provider (CSP) when necessary rather than maintaining a dedicated recovery site. The use of cloud resources minimizes upfront and maintenance costs, allowing companies with limited budgets to efficiently protect their computing environment.
- Flexibility and scalability – CSPs have virtually unlimited resources that can be used to address an evolving IT environment without rebuilding the recovery solution. This provides companies the assurance that new systems and applications can easily be incorporated into business continuity plans.
- Improved backup and disaster recovery solutions – Backing up to the cloud eliminates the need for an expensive on-premises backup infrastructure. Recovering cloud resources provides additional resiliency as systems can be recovered in different geographic locations when necessary.
- Enhanced data access – Cloud resources can be accessed from any location with an internet connection. This access facilitates more effective recovery and enables stakeholders to quickly connect to recovered assets and keep the business running.
- On-demand testing – A cloud-based recovery solution enables businesses to perform on-demand testing. They can address specific points of the plan or attempt a complete recovery to identify inefficiencies that need to be rectified before it’s needed to resolve real business disruptions.
VAST’s Cloud-Based Business Continuity Solutions
VAST understands the importance of business continuity and offers a range of services designed to keep your company going despite unexpected disruptions or outages. We have your back when it comes to ensuring business continuity in the face of adversity.
Our expert and experienced technical team works with you to understand your IT environment and business processes. We take into account the risks and impact of outages as we devise an effective business continuity plan tailored to your specifications. The finished product is a compressive plan that ensures your business can survive unexpected issues.
Our cloud backup-as-a-service (CBaaS) and disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) offerings form important components of the continuity plan. Employing automated backups to the cloud, we make sure that all business-critical systems and data resources are protected and available for rapid recovery. The DRaaS solution leverages the reliability and functionality of AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to give your business the protection it deserves.
Talk to the experts at VAST today and start taking the steps to ensure business continuity in the face of any eventuality.
