Ensuring Business Continuity in the Cloud
A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a proactive plan that enables a company to respond to different types of threats and disasters without interrupting the business activities. It is mandatory if you wish to run a successful business that requires a high level of uptime. BCP’s consist of several procedures and policies meant to help you face an unpredictable situation which might put your business’s activity at risk. One of the major components of a BCP is disaster recovery plan which shouldn’t be overlooked. According to statistics, last year, 86% of the companies experienced one or more downtown periods, while one in ten businesses said they experienced business losses because of the lack of a DR plan. So, it’s more than obvious that having a contingency plan for unpredictable circumstances can save your business not only from financial losses but also from reputational damages.
How could business continuity save your business
- Reduce downtime
As I mentioned above many companies have experienced serious business downtime turning into heavy financial losses, starting from $7,000 per hour for small companies, up to $1.3Million per hour for the larger companies. One of the BCP’s objectives is to significantly reduce these downtimes while lowering the financial loss.
- Safeguard your data
Every business handles important and confidential information which needs to be securely stored. Imagine what would happen if your business was targeted by a cyber-attack and your customer’s private identifiable information(PII) was leaked. Revenue losses would be overwhelming, not to mention your company’s credibility which is even more difficult to recover.
- Prevent your business from shutting down
In the case of a disaster, or an unpredictable situation, the BCP will come in handy and limit the risks to your business.
Cloud computing is a “multi-tasking” environment, improving your business continuity. Here are some cloud technologies that will help with business IT redundancy:
- Virtualization technology allows the backup and replication of workloads across multiple global data centers
- Cloud-based traffic management enables organizations to control traffic over large distances
According to the IDG Enterprise’s 2016 Cloud Computing Survey, 33% of the top cloud investments focus on business efficiency by enabling business continuity within their organizations. Moreover, to make sure that your business will not be damaged in case of a disaster, it is highly important to enable strong cloud back-up strategies for your business continuity. Here are a few of them:
- Conduct a Total Cost of Ownership analysis
- Follow governance and compliance rules
- Engage multiple vendors
- Back-up locally and remotely encrypt back-up data
Bottom line, businesses need to be prepared for any unpredictable situation that might appear along the way, and the only way to successfully do that is by having strong business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
Photo source: pixabay.com
NatashaJaine
Almost many IT companies irrespective of the scale of its size around the world are migrated to cloud-based Microsoft 365 solutions because of its huge benefits. A cloud service creates an environment where more companies or projects can work together which eventually leads to a huge rate of returns to run a business in.
Martin Se.
I like how many people confuse business continuity with disaster recovery. I think it’s necessary to differentiate the both, emphasizing the fact that DR plan is the more technical aspect of business continuity, and serves its purpose. Yet I think organizations’ awareness of DR and its importance is impressive to me. I’m hired by a small business to take care of IT issues, and recently got budget for a good DR plan and we teamed up with cloudendure for that reason. As I’m pretty new to here, I was impressed indeed because I feel like people really internalize the substantial necessity of DR and thinking about tomorrow’s day.
Rick Blaisdell
Hello, Martin! It’s great to hear that companies are allocating budgets for that purpose. It is essential for every company to secure the data stored in the cloud. However, the concepts you mentioned are connected. We can’t talk about business continuity without involving some technical aspect, and otherwise.
craighere
Super relevant article, Rick! I just teamed up with n2ws for AWS backup and DR plan and I’m loving being in this world, making strategies to keep the business intact at all aspects.
Rick Blaisdell
Hi there! Thank you for the appreciation. The technology world is fantastic if you ask me, so keep reading about it, will always be amazed by its fast development.