A Guide to Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that no business is immune to disaster. So many things can bring a business to its knees – a cyberattack, a natural disaster, an equipment failure, human error. Any of these can cause data loss, downtime, loss of customer confidence and, ultimately, money. While the cost of downtime can vary depending on the circumstances, a recent report from Veeam pegs it at more than $67,000 per hour for high-priority applications. And few are spared; 96% of organizations have experienced at least one outage in the past three years.

These stark numbers have prompted more companies to adopt some type of disaster recovery plan, but the completeness and maturity of those plans vary widely. In general, a comprehensive disaster recovery plan involves mapping out how all local data and applications will be replicated to an offsite location, which can serve as a full secondary infrastructure in case of disaster. While many organizations accomplish this process on their own, a growing number are getting help in the form of disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

This report on disaster recovery as a service details what DRaaS is, how it differs from traditional disaster recovery, why companies should consider it, what steps IT professionals should take before moving forward with DRaaS and best practices for choosing the right DraaS solution.