Let’s face it – Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) have taken the biggest hit post the pandemic fallout. A look at the numbers suggests that 53% of small business owners do not expect to return to pre-Covid operations for at least the next six months according to a Small Business Pulse Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in December 2020. But what is it that makes SMBs prone to such setbacks, unlike their larger counterparts? Is it their small or rather non-existent IT teams or the lack of deep pockets? It’s partially both, but the biggest reason is the absence of a business continuity plan.
Having a Disaster Recovery (DR) strategy is nothing less than imperative in today’s context. Nevertheless, before we delve deeper into the reasons why, it is important to acknowledge the radical shift in how DR is now being offered. Here are seven reasons why SMBs must get a fully functional DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) solution for their workloads.
1. Downtime events may last longer than a day.
The ability to quickly recover from a disaster is an asset that is indispensable. A DRaaS offering with your cloud or DRaaS service provider lets you restore cloud-based backups in a fraction of the time that a traditional DR setup takes, bringing you back to business before any of your competitors.
2. An attack could sometimes mean the end of your business.
Did you know that almost 25% of businesses never recover after a disaster. The major reason for this is that small businesses not always have surplus resources to continue operations and provide services to their customers which is also why SMB’s ignore DR. However now DRaaS comes with zero capex cost and a simple subscription model giving back hope to many vulnerable SMBs.
3. Integration has never been easier.
DRaaS enables automated backup of your business’s critical workloads, applications, and data by setting up the schedule just once. Your service provider can integrate your DRaaS solution and your backups and other data protection solutions without needing to manage it as a separate entity. If you are wondering what your IT teams have to do – the answer is nothing.
4. Cloud provider takes the burden of manpower, not you.
The workforce concern for SMBs has now ceased to exist with DRaaS in the picture. In the event of a disaster, the people, processes, and technology of the business need not play a role since the service provider has easy and efficient ways to implement the end-to-end recovery strategy so you can focus on your business.
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5. End to end responsibility of the setup is taken by the vendor while maintaining the SLA for RPO/RTO.
Amongst the several advantages that DRaaS providers offer to SMBs, matching their recovery SLA to the unique business requirements is one of them. They take complete ownership so you can continue to stand up against your competitors even after undergoing a data attack. However, you must choose a service provider that specializes in providing a consultative approach to help you get the best possible support.
6. DRaaS is simple, transparent, and flexible.
You might think that adding DRaaS to the existing list of your subscriptions is not worth the pain. However, DRaaS providers have brought about multiple service models that are flexible and easy to monitor. Dashboards and tools dedicated to making customers’ subscription management simple are now being added to the service for this purpose.
7. Fully customizable orchestration options for recovery.
DRaaS solutions come with the feature of providing orchestrated recovery. This is especially important when VMs have dependencies on one another, and you want to ensure that AD (Active Directory) servers start up before your clusters or database servers. Besides this, there are a variety of scenarios where a well-planned disaster orchestration can come in handy.
If you are an SMB and are looking for a seasoned DRaaS provider then Cloud4C is the best fit for you.
