The Impact Of Cloud Services On Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery
A quick search on business continuity and disaster recovery will reveal interesting facts. 45% of unplanned downtime in companies is due to hardware failure. Moreover, 48% of IT professionals think that phishing emails are the cause of ransomware.
Businesses are faced with the reality of business continuity and disaster recovery. However, cloud services are rapidly changing industry dynamics, and businesses that fail to adapt can incur huge losses.
Data protection and business continuity were only accessible to big companies that could afford large data centers sometime before. With the advent of the public cloud and cloud hosting providers, any business can use it to manage their losses.
Benefits Of Cloud Business Continuity And Disaster Recovery
The cloud significantly impacts business continuity. One of its most obvious benefits is that it allows the organization to reduce downtime by configuring the workloads to the cloud. Critical applications will still run easily if your organization faces data center issues.
It can also help cope with increased workloads. For instance, businesses can scale workloads using the cloud. A cloud service can be easily configured to provide additional vendor management systems in case of additional workload.
Cloud services are also useful in simplifying disaster recovery planning. Continuous data protection on the premises can help create a backup to the cloud ensuring critical data is protected. Using the cloud, you can create a backup to an off-site location where it is safe in case of any disaster that might affect the data center.
In the 2017 hurricane season, the total property losses equaled $200 billion, according to the Disaster Recovery Journal. Similarly, the wildfires in California caused losses worth $180 billion. You can miss the true impact in such a case.
Even if you can restore your data somehow, there is an additional cost associated with data loss which many people fail to gauge fully. You can lose the trust of your partners, customers, and other stakeholders. All these are critical reasons to understand the cloud's full impact and use it to your advantage to protect your data and drive business.
Things To Consider To Implement Cloud Business Continuity
There are several things to consider after you have decided to use the cloud for business continuity. The following are the most important factors to account for.
Cost
It is important to analyze the cost of your business continuity plan. Until recently, the public cloud was an inexpensive solution to on-premise operations. However, a cost-to-benefit analysis is necessary today to make business sense of the decision.
Software Compatibility
There may be some applications that don’t run on the cloud, while others may be too costly. You must ensure the hardware and software you use are compatible with your business needs and the cloud servers.
The Reputation Of The Provider
Another thing to consider is your cloud provider’s reputation and how they ensure business continuity. A reputable service provider should guarantee a minimal level of services through a service level agreement.
Security
You should ensure that your cloud business continuity plan meets the standard security regulations in your industry. In some industries, violating security practices can lead to penalization.
Data Ownership
You should know exactly where the provider will store your data. Ensure you also retain data ownership, which should be clear in terms of service.
End Note
The enormous benefits of the cloud on business continuity and data recovery are driving more enterprises than ever before to implement it. It’s important to select a solution that best suits your business’s current and future needs.