According to one recent study, the average cost associated with unplanned instances of IT downtime comes in at roughly $5,600 (£4,500) per minute. The same study also indicated that approximately 98% of organisations say that even a single hour of downtime can cost them roughly $100,000 (£80,850) once all factors are considered.
Keep in mind that these losses not only include the costs associated with lost productivity, but also the damage that might be done to important files, the cost to actually repair the cause of the downtime in the first place and many, many others.
Veeam’s recent move to the cloud across their portfolio of products makes sense, especially when looking at the era we’re in now. And it makes even more sense that they’re moving away from tape disaster recovery in favour of the cloud.
Businesses can’t afford to be lagging behind their competition if anything were to go wrong with their data. A crisis could occur at any time, from human error to a natural disaster, and if your data is only backed up on physical hard drives, you may not be able to retrieve it. However, with a cloud backup, the recovery process is more efficient.
In this blog, we’ll cover why Veeam is making the move to the cloud — and why that’s especially good for disaster recovery.
The benefits of using the cloud for disaster recovery: breaking things down
Ultimately, the most important way in which using the cloud for disaster recovery benefits businesses is because it is simply a far more flexible option than any others currently available.
Only the cloud gives companies the ability to protect, restore and even migrate workloads across any cloud — including long-term storage — at scale. This level of dynamic scalability represents a solution that can continue to support a business as it grows and evolves.
If your company suddenly rapidly expands, you don’t have to worry about running out and buying additional physical storage to meet your backup and disaster recovery needs. Thanks to the dynamic scalability inherent in the cloud by its nature, the process remains largely the same regardless of how you and your data change around it.
Portability that is second-to-none
A significant advantage to using the cloud for disaster recovery comes by way of the fact that it’s a 100% portable solution. You can move data between different clouds — and even between on-premises and off-premises environments — with no barriers or other restrictions to speak of.
For the sake of example, let’s say that your physical place of business unfortunately and unexpectedly burns to the ground one day. If all of your critical data was backed up onto hard drives that were stored in that location, that information is likely gone for good. With the cloud, however, you don’t have anything to worry about because those backups didn’t physically exist in your environment at all.
What this means is that as soon as you have a secondary location ready-to-go, you can resume normal operations almost immediately, provided that you have at least one computer or mobile device, and an active Internet connection. Your home could easily become your temporary office and you’ll have access to all the same information and all of the same applications that you would have, had you never gone through such a disaster in the first place.
An efficient process that generates essential peace-of-mind
Overall, Veeam’s move into the cloud for backup and disaster recovery is hugely beneficial because it’s simply a far more efficient process than using physical hard drives or tape-based media.
Once the solution itself is configured, the actual cloud backup process is automatic. It’s not something that you have to remember to do or be proactive about. It just happens, allowing you to focus more of your attention on those tasks that truly need you. Veeam solutions are market leaders in cloud backup and data protection, our Veeam Cloud Connect pricing calculator identifies what efficient cloud backup could cost you.
Guarding against device failure
An important thing to consider is the fact that, regardless of their quality, physical hard drives will eventually deteriorate, break down and fail. This is especially true if you’re talking about older hard disk drives, which contain moving parts and actual mechanical components inside that have a limited lifespan. When you’re talking about a resource like flash-based storage media, even the best drives still have a limited number of times that they can be read and written to before you begin to encounter problems. These are simply limitations that are inherent in the technologies themselves.
This means that even if you’re not the unfortunate victim of some type of IT-related disaster, you still have to worry about the foregone conclusion of data loss due to equipment failure. It’s not a matter of “if,” but “when” — adding yet another thing to concern yourself with.
Thanks to the nature of the cloud, this isn’t a problem you have to worry about, allowing you to finally have the true peace-of-mind that only comes with knowing your business (and everything you’ve worked hard to achieve up to this point) is well and truly taken care of.
Access your data from anywhere — instantly
In the event of a disaster, if your backup data is on either disk or tape and these storage devices are still accessible, it could take quite some time to be able to get access to them due to the nature of a disaster. Tape could be held off-site, or the disk backup system could be powered down. With cloud-based data backup, you avoid many of the risks associated with data access. Data stored in the cloud is often accessible from anywhere, anytime with the correct security in place.
When choosing your disaster recovery solution, make sure you research exactly what is right for your business. This may mean consulting with specialists in order to get a tailored solution that suits your needs.
