Many companies now operate using Microsoft Azure as a comprehensive and flexible business solution. Yet, while Azure does have independent backup options available for company data, the question arises on whether there are more tailored solutions that can provide an organisation with enhanced business continuity planning (BCP).
While the effects of downtime or data loss may seem distant, business owners need to be mindful that the correct backup and retention policies are in place to satisfy their business requirements. In our experience, there are advantages to using third-party back up vendors. Here, we discuss why.
Structuring your data for business recovery
Active vs archive
Using a specialist third party for backing up your business data can enable your organisation to prioritise data recovery alongside your business continuity plan. Company data can be organised and structured into active and archived material, allowing businesses to recover active data first, thereby reducing recovery time.
Work in progress data recovery
Further to this, businesses can break down their active data by working progress to prioritise what data needs recovering first. Creating a Recovery Time Objective as part of a BCP can be an effective approach to this. By breaking down a company’s data in this manner, the recovery process can be pre-planned, allowing businesses to get back up and functioning much quicker.
Recovering digital assets
For businesses who have a large number of digital assets that need recovering quickly in the event of a system breakdown or cyber-attack, relying on a disaster recovery plan alone could be costly. This type of data recovery is not prioritised and can take weeks or even months to complete. Businesses in this situation need a BCP in place, but they also should consider the benefits of a bespoke data backup solution to minimise downtime and prevent data loss.
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Considerations of cost when it comes to data storage and recovery
Data backup and recovery solutions can have a number of hidden costs involved, such as cost by storage and data transit charges. It’s also well worth checking if your storage solution will facilitate deduplication, data compression, data encryption in transit and at rest, and on-premise and cloud back up solutions. Together, these can help to protect data, integrate across solutions to reduce costs and remove redundant assets.
Protecting data wherever it resides
Today’s IT environments are often an amalgamation of physical, virtual and mail servers, SaaS environments and cloud storage, all of which require protection. A third-party vendor can protect data across these hybrid systems, making it easy to recover, no matter where it is located.
Creating robust business continuity planning
When a business’s infrastructure is attacked or fails, the speed of recovery can be make-or-break. It is at these crucial times when your backup solution can pay dividends. Backing up with a third-party vendor can help form the backbone to a robust business continuity plan.
We can recommend and provide best of breed solutions with a broad selection of backup, storage and recovery services that scale to your business’s requirements and budget.
Find out more
If you would like to discuss business continuity planning and data backup, protection and recovery solutions, we can advise and help you decide on the best way forward.
If you would like to speak to us about any aspect of this article, contact Andrew Wayman at andrew.wayman@sdt.co.uk or call our office on +44 (0)1344 870062.