When the unexpected happens, from natural disasters to theft and damage, you need to be able to quickly recover from the disaster and ensure your company’s IT system is functioning again as fast as you can.
Traditional vs cloud based disaster recovery
Traditional IT systems are more vulnerable to loss or physical damage as the infrastructure is often on site and may or may not be in a secure environment. Your budget is unlikely to be able to match that of an IT company. Cloud based IT providers have an advantage over most businesses in the quality and security of their systems. They will always have a level of redundancy and duplication built in so they can rapidly move services from one location to another.
What are the main items to consider?
Most IT teams recognise the potential advantages of using a cloud provider but there are some things you need to think about. For example:
- Security – is your data being transmitted and stored in a secure manner?
- Users – who has access and how are they controlled?
- Location – where is the infrastructure based?
- Support – how easy is it to access support and is it any good when you get through?
- Internet – what is the quality of your internet service?
- Data – when a backup recovery is needed – what are you trying to recover and how is it split into logical packages?
You need a disaster recovery plan
Whatever the answers to these questions are, you are going to need to develop a robust disaster recovery plan, so that when something happens you have the procedures in place to quickly bounce back. A typical plan will consider the priorities for data and applications your business is using and will ensure the critical items are restored first.
Disaster recovery is an area that IGC has vast experience in as unfortunately a major IT issue is often the trigger for clients to contact us in the first place. If you contact us now you will be in a much stronger position to avoid problems in the future.
