Benefits of Cloud Business Continuity
In today's fast-paced world, when everybody is trying to reach cloud nine. The businesses around us are shifting towards cloud technologies to get the most out of their spending. Without technology being our best friend, we are limiting ourselves from exploring the potential our businesses could show.
Being your boss via a business might have been difficult in older days, but tech advancements have certainly made starting businesses easier in the recent era.
The problem starts when the businesses need to do better after a specific time, and continuing it becomes problematic, just like our gym-going habits. This is where business continuity in the cloud comes in handy.
Importance of Cloud Computing
We have to consider many things when making decisions about business continuity. However, before diving into business continuity solutions, we must do a temperature check by identifying the solution that best suits our business needs.
These needs can essentially be broken into two approaches – on-premises and cloud-based. When we consider the importance of cloud computing in today's IT landscape, cloud-based solutions conquer the marketplace, and that too in a good sense.
Let's have a tighter look at some major benefits of cloud business continuity:
Flexibility and Scalability
One of the prominent benefits of using the cloud for business continuity is that users can access data anywhere. This helps to standardize business functions in an outage, as staff can access the data from virtually anywhere.
Cloud business continuity also provides businesses the authority to choose which data and apps the users want to move to the cloud. Some businesses might opt to only store their most essential data in the cloud, while less essential data can be stored on in-house servers.
Cost-Effective
Cloud-based business continuity solutions are very cost-effective than the orthodox methods. Various subscription plans can be modified as operations grow to retain more services.
Leveraging a cloud solution can lower standard costs with on-premises solutions, such as on-site hardware, building maintenance, server support, and even physical safety. This not only stops large investments but decreases monthly bills, too.
Seamless Backup & Disaster Retrieval
Backing up data is the main ingredient for any successful business continuity plan recipe. Cloud-based data backup features 99% reliability. This means the chance of backup loss and data being misplaced is minimal. The process of data backups can even be automated and performed in real-time or in some intervals, leaving a tiny margin for manual mistakes.
Some questions we might ask ourselves when assessing our cloud backup and recovery solution include the following:
- How often should complete backups be performed
- How long should backups be kept based on regulatory or obedience requirements
- What data and systems require backup
Since the cloud can conveniently copy data across numerous locations, it should be a simple task to recover that data and repair business during a natural or manmade disaster.
Executing a Cloud Business Continuity Plan for Business
There are some pivotal aspects to consider when executing a cloud-based business continuity plan for businesses. First, we should use our RTO and RPO values to organize and prioritize all systems, data, and apps. This way, we ensure that our team will know where to start the recovery efforts in a disaster.
Next, we should document our business continuity plan's operations, actions, and tasks and drive regular training. Each stakeholder must be conscious of their responsibilities to execute the agenda successfully.
Finally, it is crucial to test the cloud business continuity plan. All the work we have done setting up the plan means nothing if it doesn't perform as intended when it matters most.