New models of backup and disaster management offer a persuasive argument for business continuity

Where business continuity is concerned, investing in cloud storage is a win-win for virtually every enterprise. For started, cloud-based solutions are structurally comprised of lattices of resources located sporadically across the globe. Should one of the resources cease to be available, requests automatically re-route to the next available site. As far as availability goes, you’re looking at high availability, which is a plus for everyone.

In fact, the rise of ‘as a Service’ business models can be attributed to this level of availability. From yester-year solutions like SaaS and IaaS, today we have cloud backup and recovery systems such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS). Such models provide value especially for smaller and growing businesses, which don’t have the resources to invest in real estate and equipment to house on-site backup systems and disaster recovery sites, whether hot, warm or even cold.

In this arrangement, the cloud itself is your ‘backupsite’. Where you only pay for facilities as and when you utilize them, which make great economic sense and provides for unlimited scalability.

Importance of cloud-based business continuity solutions

According to statistical evidence, the DRaaS market has enjoyed a 36 percent annual growth rate over the last two years, a trend that will likely be in place until 2022. Cloud-based disaster recovery and backup solutions make it easier to retrieve application data and files in case of unavailability of your in-site servers and/or data centers.

By moving to the cloud, you significantly reduce the ramifications of theft, damage or vandalism on your physical data storage units, meaning you won’t have to store your physical backup tapes, drives or disks in a different site.

Enlisting services of cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions providers eliminates the need for implementing site-to-site replication, including the cost of supplementary DR infrastructure and real estate and their subsequent maintenance needs, which are real for the average business owner today.

You place your IT assets in the cloud, meaning that you have access to them from any location on the globe, and files can restore within a few hours of breach, damage or other situation resulting in unavailability.

In addition, BaaS and DRaaS solutions run independent of the deployed computer model i.e. whether you run physical servers, virtual machines, or a combination thereof, you can still use your cloud-based backup solutions. You can configure them from the outset, so that the cloud backup files immediately become available in the event of failure in your primary resources.

One last advantage is that cloud service providers take time to ensure their software and hardware systems are up-to-date, which means that your systems are constantly in sync. If you’re hosting your applications on-locations but turn to cloud solutions for replication or data backup, you won’t have to be concerned about your failover resources ever going out of date.