Critical Importance of DRaaS for your Business for Now and the Future

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It is a pattern which repeats itself year after year. From monsoons to floods to earthquakes, disasters are common to India. A 2018 UN report estimated that India has been among the top five countries with disaster-related economic losses of more than $79.5 billion in the last twenty years. India is also the 14th most vulnerable country in the world, according to the 2019 Global Climate Risk Index report.

Given this context, a robust disaster recovery process is absolutely vital, as the survival of the organization depends on it. In the current times, this is even more critical, as the Covid 19 crisis has enforced many more limitations with respect to physical access. Hence, irrespective of the size, every organization today needs a digital component. The cost of downtime in a digital age can be disastrous as it can shut down the ability of the business to deliver services to its end customers.

Traditional DR involves a huge number of steps, and is not only expensive, but also complex to execute. Firstly, setting up an alternate DR site requires enterprises to invest in acquiring the required space and the associated infrastructure (power, cooling, IT equipment) and manpower. Configuring the required infrastructure is also a complex process, as every component of the infrastructure has to be ready for deployment. This requires testing networks, software, hardware and applications. Data backup is also a tedious process. For example, if the backup medium is tape, then the tapes have to be delivered to the secondary DR site in the event of a disaster. Further, applications have to be patched with the latest updates and the network has to be configured to match the required specifications (firewall rules, authentication, DNS settings). Even if there is a small failure in one of the steps, then it stalls the entire recovery process. In the goal towards achieving DR compliance, organizations choose the DR strategy depending on the business risk. For example, the faster the recovery time needed, the more expensive is the solution. If the recovery time is slower, the cheaper is the solution. Hence, there is always a trade off between the benefit and the cost

How DRaaS can help?

Thanks to the cloud, DRaaS has emerged as a powerful option. DRaaS can help enterprises
overcome all the issues that are present with traditional DR.
Here is how

1. Faster recovery time: 

IT infrastructure components such as the operating system, application data and related patches can be quickly copied to the offsite DR site and be made live in a shorter period of time.

2. Efficient recovery: 

As every process is automated, replication is extremely efficient when compared to manual processes, which can have the probability of errors. Further, due to lower costs, organizations can test the reliability of their DR process more often, than they could have done using a traditional process. As the frequency of testing increases, it increases the accuracy, as organizations understand the gaps in their process, and can also determine the time taken for gauging how quickly critical workloads can be recovered in case of a disaster.

3. Lower TCO:

A pay-per-use model allows enterprises to pay only for actual usage. Enterprises only have to pay when data transfer takes place between the primary and

secondary site.

4. Lower upfront investment:

The cloud has levelled the playing field for even smaller organizations, as there is zero capital investment, and an enterprise has to only pay when the cloud option is used

5. Anywhere access:

The ability to access information from any part of the globe gives DRaaS a massive advantage. As the information is stored in the cloud, a DR process can be fired from anywhere in the world by just using a smartphone or a laptop. This is of huge advantage in the current situation, where organizations have been forced to cut down their manpower visiting their data centers. Today, DRaaS gives organizations the capability to shift the operations to a remote DR site quickly.

In an environment that demands an always-on infrastructure, DRaaS is a must have option today, as it gives enterprises the confidence and the ability to bounce back quickly in case of any disaster.