Disaster recovery solutions — more accessible, and more necessary, than ever before

used with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Site

Very few of us would hide our life savings under our mattress with confidence that those funds would remain safe and sound. Financial institutions provide us with a plethora of options for the safekeeping of our money, so it’s crazy to think that we’d opt for hiding all of our cash in the bedroom.

The equivalent of hiding cash under a mattress is actually fairly commonplace in many businesses. Companies frequently store all of their data and information in just one place, leaving them vulnerable to dire consequences should catastrophe, whether physical or technical, occur. Unfortunately, few companies that undergo significant data loss resulting from a disaster can pull things together quickly and effectively enough to survive long-term, further underscoring how imperative it is for businesses to have effective disaster recovery solutions in place.

Businesses have a number of options for preserving business continuity in the wake of disaster and cloud computing stands out as one of the most compelling, cost-effective and easy-to-maintain solutions. One obvious reason businesses can rely on cloud services for disaster recovery is that the cloud stores data in places other than where your business physically resides, which means a physical disaster that strikes your place of work shouldn’t impact your data. What’s more, oftentimes a cloud service provider will offer geographic redundancy, a feature that replicates data in numerous locations for added security.

Additionally, many cloud vendors provide hosting services that help keep your business running while you recover from disaster. Cloud computing solutions also help ensure you receive daily backup of your data and in-place, state-of-the-art security measures.

Office 365, for example, provides robust disaster recovery capabilities as well as enterprise-grade reliability.

Continuous data backups and globally-redundant data centers help ensure your business’ data and information will remain safe and accessible even when disaster strikes.

Another computing technique that aids in disaster recovery is virtualization. Virtualization enables businesses to transmit data and applications housed on on-premise servers to remote locations. This keeps data and applications readily available should a disaster occur. With Windows Server, Microsoft offers complete Site Recovery solutions across a range of applications.

Moreover, because virtualization brings with it a host of other benefits, such as cost-savings and business agility, companies that previously couldn’t afford disaster recovery solutions now can, while also taking advantage of the additional benefits virtualization has to offer. Virtualization allows for greater flexibility in the types of disaster recovery measures a business puts in place, further adding to its cost-effectiveness.

Whichever technology solutions you implement to aid in disaster recovery, be sure to check that they’ll meet your needs should the worst occur. For instance, implement test scenarios in which you pretend a catastrophe has occurred and practice your disaster recovery process to determine if your technology solutions can keep your business up and running, no matter what.