Back“He who fails to plan is planning to fail”
Strategy and planning are at the heart of the most successful business ventures, yet business continuity and disaster recovery, fall short of most organisations‘ consideration.
In today’s always-on world, the demand for availability is increasing while tolerance for downtime plummets. Disaster recovery is no longer a luxury reserved for large multinational corporations, but a necessary weapon that every organisation must have in its arsenal.
What is Disaster Recovery?
Disaster recovery is the process of restoring an organisation’s files and data following an outage. It is a solution that enables companies to quickly and efficiently get their systems back up and running again.
Often, disaster recovery solutions are utilised following a crisis such as a fire, a natural disaster, a cyberattack or even a human error. Despite the fear-inducing name, disaster recovery picks a company back up when it is on its knees. It restores data that would ordinarily be lost and prevents productivity and turnover from suffering.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
The Effects of Disasters
Before we begin to examine the merits and demerits of various disaster recovery solutions, we must first define “disaster” in a business continuity context. Simply put,
« A disaster is an unforeseen, devastating event that has the capacity to jeopardise the running and lifetime of a business. »
Although disaster is a word often reserved for the direst situations and circumstances, when examined within the context of business continuity, its occurrence seems far more plausible. After all, in 2019 alone over 219 natural disasters occurred which amounted to over €44 billion in economic losses across the world.
However, a disaster does not have to take the form of a tsunami or a tornado, something as common as a flood, a power outage, a cyberattack or even a simple human error can put a business at risk. Unfortunately, the occurrence of disasters is not a rarity, but companies with a disaster recovery plan are.
How Does Disaster Recovery Work?
Traditionally, disaster recovery solutions were extremely costly and complex. Organisations had to carry out three time-consuming steps to ensure that they were protected:
- Purchase separate premises – this is where all company information would be replicated to.
- Install a second set of software – companies had to duplicate all of their existing servers, systems and software and house it in the aforementioned location.
- Leave on standby – all of this infrastructure was then left on standby, ready to be utilised in the event of a disaster occurring.
This approach, although in theory effective, drained not only a vast amount of capital but also company resources. Traditional disaster recovery systems were difficult to manage and required a great deal of up-front investment. For many SMEs and smaller organisations, a disaster recovery solution was simply unaffordable and, consequently, many companies were left unprotected.
Fast forward a few years and enter Disaster Recovery as a Service, or DRaaS. DRaaS is a secure solution that backs up company information in real-team and replicates it in a secure environment. This solution enables companies to recover data in moments and get their business back up and running with as little downtime as possible. As the saying goes, time is money, and when it comes to downtime and disaster recovery, this certainly rings true. In fact, across all industries and organisational sizes, the average cost of downtime over €220,000 per hour – that breaks down to over €3,600 per minute.
DRaaS is a secure and cost-effective solution that ensures company information is always protected by utilising cloud computing and service provider’s data centres. At Stryve, we have two data centres; one in Cork, Ireland and another in Warsaw, Poland.
DRaaS is Provided in Several Different Ways;
• DRaaS with public cloud: a large public cloud service provider, such as Microsoft Azure, provides a disaster recovery solution to your company.
• DRaaS with a local service provider: This is the Stryve offering – A local company (e.g. Stryve) uses their private cloud to back up company data and provide a disaster recovery solution. A key difference between this form of DRaaS and DRaaS with public cloud is that the experience is much more personalised. We are available 24/7/365 and are always only a phone call away.
• DRaaS with private cloud: similar to DRaaS with a local service provider, this option is suited towards companies with multiple processing centres in different locations. It requires companies to set up their private cloud system and allocate the role of a service provider to an internal employee.
How Does DRaaS with Stryve Work?
DRaaS uses incremental backups to ensure that company data is constantly being duplicated and is readily available in the event of a disaster. Simply put, when a file is updated on a company’s system, it is also updated on ours. DRaaS allows companies to easily recover their operations and functionality in the event of a major disruption and ensures that companies’ IT systems are available 24/7/365.
Disaster recovery has two main components:
- Recovery Point Objective or RPO – this is essentially the amount of data a company is willing to lose between time points. At Stryve our objective is to get RPO as low as possible.
But, let’s talk numbers, our current RPO is 5 seconds. Therefore, in the event of an attack, only 5 seconds worth of data will be lost and the rest can be recovered.
With such a low RPO, Stryve ensures that the company information is backed up continuously and that minimal amounts of data are lost.
- Recovery Time Objective or RTO – this is how fast we can get a company’s systems back up and running after an attack. In essence, RTO refers to how quickly a business can be back to normal again. With such a low RPO, our RTO is as fast as that company’s IT systems are.
What are the Benefits of DRaaS?
• Cost-effective: traditional disaster recovery solutions cost vast amounts of money, making them untenable for many companies. However, because our DRaaS service does not require an upfront investment, it is a simple and cost-effective way of implementing a disaster recovery solution and ensuring your organisation is protected.
• Simple: with DRaaS, companies do not need to worry about implementing and maintaining their own, private cloud disaster recovery solution. At Stryve, our experts work around the clock monitoring our client’s systems and guaranteeing 24/7/365 protection.
• Competitive advantage: without an effective disaster recovery plan, companies cannot guarantee that things will run smoothly in the event of a disaster. Customer confidence and trust enable a business to prosper and with DRaaS, companies can always meet customer needs, no matter what.
• Survive disasters: DRaaS enables organisations to survive, even in the face of adversity. Research by the U.S National Cyber Security Alliance concluded that 60 percent of SMEs go out of business within 6 months of sustaining a cyberattack. DRaaS is not just a precautionary measure, it is an investment that allows your business to flourish for years to come.
Who needs DRaaS?
Disaster Recovery as a Service is beneficial to all companies, big or small. However, it is particularly important that industries which handle sensitive information, such as finance and banking, have a disaster recovery solution in place.
What Exactly do Companies Receive with DRaaS?
Organisations that engage Stryve to provide Disaster Recovery as a Service, or DRaaS, receive continuous, personalised and comprehensive protection that improves security posture and offers organisations peace of mind.
In today’s IT climate, disaster recovery is becoming increasingly important – DRaaS is a simple and cost-effective way for any organisations to protect its brand and business.
