Federal agencies often find that their disaster recovery plans are muddled by a lack of control over digital assets, a shortage of internal expertise and inadequate end user awareness. Combined with the high-pressure scenarios in which these strategies are typically executed, there are many forces acting against IT leaders as they try to restore vital functions and keep operations moving along in a secure manner. Thankfully, cloud computing resources serve as a powerful foundation for DR functionality, and organizations are embracing these off-premise environments for this purpose.
Finally, some certainty:
When faced with a chaotic situation arising from a network disruption or other form of infrastructure downtime, tensions tend to run high within an organization, especially if the source of the interruption is unknown. Federal agencies in particular need to keep their resources available not only to internal stakeholders such as staff members and decision-makers, but also to the public entities that rely on these services. This is why dedicated disaster recovery platforms have become so popular in recent years, and why the cloud offers such undeniable value in this regard.
As Redmond Magazine explained, the Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service movement is centered on the high-powered functionality of off-premise resources, offering organizations fast and dependable restorative functions that save money and time compared to homegrown solutions. Since federal organizations are already well on their way to a cloud-dominant IT strategy, it is all the more fitting that decision-makers approach DR with the same mentality: Store data and apps in off-premise data centers and recover them when necessary using the as-a-Service model.
"Where we see people using Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service from us are those who need a recovery time objective [RTO] or a recovery point objective [RPO] that's measured in minutes, rather than hours or days," said Monty Blight, a vice president at Peak 10, according to the source. "The big key component of that is the replication piece between the two.
Resilience redefined:
At the center of all cloud developments lies virtual machine creation and manipulation, and these software elements are the key to the expedited and dependable processes found in DRaaS solutions. Virtual machines promote up-to-the-minute data and app replication, as well as quick distribution to remote end users that allows for accelerated mobile recovery. With reduced capital expense requirements and minimized upgrade demands, cloud-based DR is a valuable addition to any IT footprint.