Backup and Disaster Recovery Consolidated

Backup and disaster recovery consolidated as one service is not a new idea, but is again becoming a preferred practice with recently available technology.

There was a time when businesses and their CIOs looked at backup and disaster recovery as one and the same.  Have we seen this thinking re-emerge?  During our discussions with clients from differing industries, some used to think that backup by itself formed the disaster recovery strategy of the company.  Fortunately many CIO’s have been able to educate businesses about the various scenarios and the implications of not having strategies in place such as, standby infrastructure at an offsite location or a tested disaster recovery solution.

With the evolution and acceptance of cloud computing and online data backup systems, more businesses are able to adopt a mature backup and IT disaster recovery strategy as part of their overall business continuity plan.  Supported by the investment of tier 1 software vendors, the industry has been able to confidently combine the functions of backup and IT disaster recovery through the introduction of extended retention.

Continuous data protection (CDP) has not only reduced RPOs (recovery point objectives) to almost zero but has also allowed CIOs and CFOs to realise increased savings through consolidation.  CDP technology can be used as part of a managed backup and disaster recovery solution with the added benefit of extended retention.  If configured optionally, IT teams can have the high-availability luxury of local rollback snapshots points while having 7+ years of backup retention at the remote disaster recovery and backup site.

Offsite backup and disaster recovery treated as a single service; a consolidated approach to IT business continuity.