The cloud does not replace business continuity

The advent of commercial cloud computing means that, in theory at least, companies can scale their capacity up or down as required. Such a capability, as CIOs have been quick to realise, could offer a company the ability to use the cloud as a way to quickly replace resources that are taken out of commission by an unforeseen event, says Wayne Reed, GM, research and development at ContinuitySA.

But access to this capacity does not replace the need for a holistic business continuity plan. I sometimes get the impression that some companies are assuming that infrastructure and services that are supplied from the cloud are also covered from the point of view of business continuity. The assumption seems to be that one's data is housed across multiple data centres, thus effectively spreading risk, and that the cloud operator would itself have the appropriate business continuity procedures and solutions in place.

However, this is something that cannot be assumed. CIOs must physically test the business continuity capabilities of their cloud providers. Nothing is worth anything in business continuity until it has been tested: when disaster strikes, it's too late to find out that something doesn't work!

A related issue is that CIOs need to have an exit strategy in place should they decide to change to a different cloud provider. One also needs to plan for the possibility of a provider going out of business. It's not an unreasonable concern, especially in today's challenging economy. If the cloud provider's assets are taken over by a liquidator, for example, what procedure is in place for gaining access to critical company data that is held in the cloud?

Despite the risks and immaturity of the market, it is exciting to see how cloud is transforming the way companies approach business continuity. Cloud allows companies to avoid capital expenditure and purchase virtualised capacity within a business continuity provider's data centre, making replication of critical systems and data a real possibility and thus dramatically reducing the time to rebuild these environments.

The high cost and limited availability of bandwidth has long been an inhibiting factor in South Africa, but bandwidth is now becoming more readily available and prices are slowly dropping in line with international norms. Bandwidth requirements must be clearly understood to ensure cloud-based services are accessible under both normal operational conditions and when a disaster strikes.

By the way, the availability of bandwidth means that the capacity set aside for business continuity in the disaster recovery centre can also be made available for normal operations, thereby profoundly improving the benefits derived from business continuity spend.

The cloud is showing great potential for establishing new methods to improve business continuity - but the fundamentals of solid planning, regular testing, and appropriate user training remain as important as ever.