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Recovery-as-a-service gains traction

Regina Pazvakavambwa
By Regina Pazvakavambwa, ITWeb portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 27 Jul 2015
Organisations are looking for disaster recovery solutions that are less expensive and time-consuming, says EOH's Richard Vester.
Organisations are looking for disaster recovery solutions that are less expensive and time-consuming, says EOH's Richard Vester.

Recovery-as-a-service (RaaS) is fast becoming the recognised standard in the world of business continuity management and disaster recovery.

This is according to Richard Vester, head of cloud services at EOH, who notes the barriers to entry have been lowered, as fibre optic cables are now readily available. RaaS is becoming a lot more prevalent and available in organisations and more service providers are starting to offer this solution, he adds.

Organisations are looking for disaster recovery solutions that are less expensive and time-consuming, says Vester.

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are finding it hard to keep pace with the exponential data growth and, therefore, organisations need solutions that can keep up with the industry changes, he adds.

While backup has long been normal business practice, true disaster recovery used to be for big organisations, says Vester. Only the most deep-pocketed organisations could afford the equipment and know-how needed to put together a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, he adds.

Vester says RaaS backs up the whole environment, not just the data, and since it's a cloud solution, businesses can order it at almost any capacity, making it more cost-effective. "The biggest benefit offered by RaaS is faster recovery and reduced recovery costs."

He points out failure by service providers to offer RaaS solutions will leave them trailing behind a rapidly changing industry, and will eventually cost them customers who will start relationships with competitors to seek the benefits of RaaS.

However, Vester cautions service providers to be careful of over promising on what outsourced disaster recovery means, because RaaS still requires orchestration, testing, and defined policies, he says.

While the cloud makes recovery quick and easy, companies must first understand what a true disaster recovery strategy is to take advantage of RaaS' benefits, he says.

In SA, although cloud dominates discussions by organisations, the adoption of RaaS is low. This is because of lack of skills and holding on to the old way of disaster recovery and business continuity, adds Vester.

He says most companies who have invested in traditional disaster recovery do not want to change their attitude on how new technologies can assist their businesses.

"If organisations invest time and money in the right disaster recovery plan for their business, what they are left with is not simply backups or replication, but a complete strategy for retaining their critical data for long-term periods and rapid recovery for their mission critical applications."

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