Some business may feel like they can get by without a reliable disaster recovery solution – that is, until disaster actually strikes. Taking the “it won’t happen to me” approach is hugely risky, particularly with the broad range of incidents that could conceivably disrupt your business. Malicious attacks, insider threats, hardware faults, software integration problems and more recently ransomware – the list of potential disasters that could affect your company is extremely wide ranging.
[easy-tweet tweet=”The reality is that technology fails, humans make mistakes and nature is unpredictable” hashtags=”DisasterRecovery, Cloud”]
What’s more, many business are choosing to implement disaster recovery solutions because opting to go without one can have serious implications. Unplanned downtime and lack of availability can be hugely costly, particularly when affecting core IT processes. According to a 2016 Availability Report, the gap between what IT systems can deliver and what businesses need is costing firms up to $16 million every year. When you factor in additional damage to a company’s reputation, disaster recovery starts to make a lot more sense from a financial point of view.
In addition, it seems that incidents of unplanned downtime are actually on the rise, suggesting that many businesses are struggling to put a successful disaster recovery or business continuity programme in place. Perhaps businesses are not yet convinced that they need disaster recovery, but that could change very quickly.
“My business will be fine. It has been so far”
While each individual business will require a bespoke solution that suits their needs, it is likely that all companies will benefit from disaster recovery in the long term. Sensible business leaders are increasingly thinking in terms of “when’’, not ‘’if” disruption will occur. The reality is that technology fails, humans make mistakes and nature is extremely unpredictable.
When businesses accept that these factors are outside of their control, implementing disaster recovery is the next logical step. This often starts with an assessment of your business processes to ascertain how long they can remain down for and at what cost. Once businesses are armed with this information they can mitigate disruption much more effectively.
However, perhaps the single biggest reason why businesses need to employ a disaster recovery solution is that they now operate in an “always-on” environment. In the past, before the Internet and cloud computing, customers accepted periods of unavailability as the norm. This is no longer the case. Disaster recovery is vital for modern businesses because consumers, clients and partners will quickly move on if companies are not able to recover from disruption
Here is a real scenario that caused one company to review its DR plans:
- “We had a gutter running above the communications room and along the roof housing our air conditioning units for the building. Seagulls were destroying insulating material around some of the big pipes and this managed to get into the gutter.
- We had torrential rain on a Friday which resulted in the gutter filling quickly due to the insulation material getting jammed. The water level rose and started to come into the building.
- In the corner of the comms room water started to flood in, coming down the wall half a meter from the electrical box which could have blown, but we were lucky.
- A massive panic and shutting down of equipment followed. Moving it under this stress is not funny, but you cannot help but laugh, seeing Carl standing with a girl’s umbrella in the corner of the room directing the incoming water to a bin with holes in it ..…
- Luckily for us the facilities manager got on the roof and freed the gutter which resulted in the water stopping.
- If this had happened just 1 hour later no one would have been in the building and we would have suffered a massive outage from water damage to our essential IT Infrastructure.
- You may think it will never happen, but this goes to prove that it can.”
M7 can help businesses (that are) looking to protect their investment by embracing disaster recovery solutions. The managed services that we deliver include off-site data back up with a wide range of recovery options, for customers who wish to host their own infrastructure. For businesses preferring to make use of M7’s advanced infrastructure solutions, we incorporate full business recovery using the most cost-effective technology currently available into our design and build process.
[easy-tweet tweet=”The global market for #disaster #recovery is expected to be worth $6.4 billion by 2020″ hashtags=”DRaaS, Cloud”]
The global market for disaster recovery is expected to be worth $6.4 billion by 2020. The rapid growth of this market is testament to the fact that more and more businesses are realising that they too need to be fully prepared in the event of any disruption. If you don’t want to leave your company’s success to chance, disaster recovery offers the safest and most reliable way of protecting its future.