Organizations often overlook their data backup solution while planning business continuity plans. There are several things to consider while planning business continuity, and one of the most important things is choosing the right and reliable data backup solution.
Nowadays, data backup solutions offer much more than just backup and restore. A robust data backup software will offer data recovery and continuity to businesses during unexpected outages. Thus, keeping your business afloat during crucial times.
If you are planning a business continuity plan (BCP) for your organization, it is the right time to know why choosing a trustworthy data backup solution is essential. However, let’s be clear, only backing up data will not guarantee business continuity; there are many other aspects to business continuity. To understand it, let’s see what a business continuity plan is.
What Is a Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?
A BCP is a detailed document that outlines how the business functions during unplanned downtime. It contains a contingency plan for every aspect of business, this includes business processes, assets, human resources, IT infrastructure, and business partners.
A holistic business continuity plan can keep the business running, protect data, safeguard the brand, and retain customers during unexpected circumstances. As per IDC, for the Fortune 1000, the average total cost of unplanned application downtime per year is $1.25 billion to $2.5 billion.
To avoid application downtime, your BCP should have strategies to handle IT disruptions to networks, servers, personal computers, and mobile devices. The data should be available in no time to start the business functions as quickly as possible.
A business continuity plan for applications and processes should contain the following:
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High availability of data: It is important for enterprises to have access to data, applications, and processes all the time, regardless of the failures.
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Continuous operations even during disasters: Scheduled backups and planned maintenance of IT infrastructure can help you achieve the ability to keep things running when disaster strikes.
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Disaster recovery processes to get back up and running: An ability to recover data as soon as possible is crucial. If the closest data center is destroyed, there should be a way to get data from different sites to avoid inoperability.
You can achieve the above aspects with a robust and reliable data backup solution.
Choose Right Data Backup Solution for Business Continuity Plan
The right data backup will provide a lot more than just backup. If your backup solution offers the below list of features, you can keep your data safe and secure even during disasters.
A Backup Solution That Offers More Than Just Backup
The bare minimum requirement of a reliable backup solution is to provide backup and restore features. Your backup software should support different types of storage, like tapes, clouds, and disks. Also, it should support multiple workloads like different operating systems, applications, databases, and virtual platforms to back up all the systems available in your organization’s environment.
Your backups should also be protected from ransomware attacks and other attacks. If your shortlisted backup software provides all these features, you are one step closer to selecting a perfect backup solution.
Near Real-Time Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
RPO is the amount of data the business can afford to lose and continue to function without causing any significant damage to the business. The backup solution you choose should help you achieve your recovery objectives. A near real-time RPO should be achievable with the backup software used in your environment.
Quick Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
RTO is the target time taken by the organization to recover its applications and processes after a disaster strikes. The chosen data backup solution should help your business function and run as quickly as possible after an unexpected failure. This can only be done if the solution offers disaster recovery features that allow the quickest RTO. Thus, saving the company’s reputation during downtime.
Backup Strategy That Includes On-Site and Off-Site Backups
Your data backup solution should offer ways to store data on-site, as well as off-site. The 3-2-1 backup rule works seamlessly in such conditions. However, if your data backup software only stores data in one place, recovering it will be difficult in case of unexpected events. Make sure, you opt for the solution that supports hybrid cloud backup and offers expertise in effective backup strategies for your business.
Partial or Full Data Replication
Data replication involves storing the data from the primary server or cloud to a secondary server or some other node. Data replication ensures data synchronization and availability of data during downtime and outages. Your data backup solution should offer a data replication feature so that you can achieve a high availability aspect of business continuity.
Reliable Disaster Recovery Processes
Data backup solutions should provide a solution that securely protects your critical workload and instantly recovers it irrespective of the nature of the disaster, thus ensuring business continuity. Disaster recovery is an important aspect of data backup and business continuity, so neglecting this part can be unfavorable during disasters and outages.
So, the right data backup solution should have a blend of all the above-mentioned features. And this will help you with planning a business continuity in a better way.
Zmanda – A Perfect Data Backup Solution for Business Continuity
Zmanda can help your business with all aspects of business continuity. It is known for its hybrid cloud environment and tape backups. You can use different types of storage for your backup, and Zmanda will just work seamlessly for you.
Zmanda’s comprehensive all-in-one cloud-native disaster recovery solution unifies backup, disaster recovery, and secure gateway access support solutions to scale backups across geographies and any number of workloads. Thus, ensuring your data is available when one of the sites is inaccessible during the disaster. You can achieve RPO & RTO objectives even during major IT outages with Zmanda.
Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) provides near real-time data replication, making disaster recovery much faster. With Zmanda as your data backup solution, you don’t need different software for data replication and disaster recovery. It is an all-in-one package that offers data backup, disaster recovery, security, business continuity, and much more without burning a hole in your pocket.
Serving 45+ customers worldwide, Zmanda has proven its expertise in data backup and recovery. Want to take a test drive of this amazing backup solution? Well, fill in this free trial form and get started. We also offer a discount to educational or government institutes. So, why wait? Start using Zmanda now!
