- 30% of businesses have no disaster recovery strategy in place.
- 90% of businesses without a plan in place will fail after an event.
- Unplanned downtime can cost you between $926 and $17,244 a minute.
There is no question that IT departments have a lot on their plate. Cloud, premises, integrations, operations, the list is never-ending. And the majority of IT departments do a great job of managing the dizzying array of technology thrown their way, but due to the overwhelming task list that the staff has to wade their way through, it’s not surprising that planning for “what-ifs” fall to the wayside.
But as the statistics above show, this has to change, and businesses have to put even more emphasis on having a strategic, all-encompassing plan around disaster recovery and business continuity. But before you start panicking about looking for more space to host more servers, there is an easier way. Let’s start by taking a look at the essential pieces to a strong BC/DR strategy.
Is it a strategy or a plan?
One key point we thought it was important to mention was the difference between a strategy and a plan. Computer Weekly states the critical difference between a strategy and a plan. The strategy tells you what you plan to do in the event of a disaster or breach, where a plan tells you how you will do it.
7 Essential Elements to a Business Continuity Plan According to Citrix
A strategy and plan, however, can fail if it doesn’t contain these 7 essential elements:
- A clearly defined team
- A detailed plan
- Effective testing
- Crisis Communication
- Employee safety
- Uninterrupted access to business resources
- Continuous IT operations
Who is in charge in the event of a disaster, outage or malware attack? When was the last time you tested your plan? How will you communicate in the midst of the crisis? These are all steps and things you should take into consideration when building your BC/DR plan.
On-Premise vs. Cloud: How to Implement your Strategy
Now that you’ve built your strategy, how will you move forward? At a minimum, you need to have a process in place that will cover the backup and restoration of your data, and this can take two forms: Cloud or on-premise.
Every business is unique and not every strategy works for every business. The same goes for business continuity and disaster recovery strategies. There are benefits and challenges to each strategy, and you need to choose the right one for you. Let’s compare the two:
| On-premise | Cloud | ||
| Advantages | Disadvantages | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| More control over how the data is secured | Increased Capital Expense to build the solution | No upfront infrastructure costs | An internet connection is required. If for some reason you lose IP, you won’t be able to access your data until IP is restored. |
| No internet connection required to access and back up | Limited Scalability | No ramp time – you can start backing up immediately | Ongoing costs |
| No 3rd party access | Added costs with maintenance and staff | Scalable, as your need for storage grows, so does your cloud access | 3rd party access |
| Still need to purchase a cloud solution to implement geo-redundance; otherwise, you incur a greater risk of loss | Pay as you go | ||
| Access data from anywhere and any device | |||
| Access to the most stringent security strategies and protections | |||
| Built-in Geo-Redundancy |
How to build an affordable BC/DR strategy?
One simple answer. The Cloud. As you can see, while each platform has their own advantages and disadvantages, the benefits of the cloud solution far outweigh the disadvantages. An on-premise solution can make up the ground in some of the advantages but for an additional cost. dinCloud has built a solution designed to incorporate the best infrastructure to secure your data and systems while maintaining a transparent billing strategy, so there are no surprises on your cloud bill. In addition, dinCloud removes the complexity behind the strategy and planning of your BC/DR plan. Our cloud specialists walk with you through the entire process and continue to support you once you have launched, ensuring that you have full access to your data and understanding of how it is stored and accessed. Start your plan today and speak with one of our specialists to see how you can secure your data in the event of a disaster without breaking the bank.
