Contents
Technology has spread its influence over almost every part of our lives we can think of. Every aspect of our lives has been shaped by constantly evolving technology. In today’s world almost every business is using computers to keep their business going. We have also seen the emergence of some huge IT companies all over the world. Almost all of their work depends on computers and servers that store up precious data of the company and their clients. The data storage and handling are the backbone of almost every IT company there is, big or small. With so much reliance on the data these companies own, they try to protect it in every way they can. Though from time to time they face certain disasters where their data is compromised and lost in some form. That is where the role of disaster recovery comes into play in different forms.
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is a process of helping a business to return to its previous state following a disaster that might have harmed the company’s access to its data, hardware, software, power, internet and so on. Recovery also includes re-locating a company if the infrastructure of the previous workplace was damaged. This would include everything from an office to its furniture to computers and servers. Transportation of the company’s employees is also included in this. Disaster recovery is done by skilled professionals who should be trained to follow a protocol to execute the recovery as quickly as possible. Time plays a huge role when we talk about data recovery as each and every day that passes by with the company not functioning puts the company under huge losses.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
The IT sector is comparatively new compared to other fields of business in the market. There are many features of the IT sector that are not known to the layman. It is not surprising that people still put forward questions like ‘What Is Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service?’ as they get confused between Disaster Recovery and DRaaS. Disaster recovery as a service is simply a third-party service that provides professional recovery services to multiple IT companies. They specialize in disaster recovery and have highly skilled engineers that can help a company to recover from many types of disasters. Loss of data, server crashes, hardware malfunction, software bugs and other problems are professionally handled by the experts at such service centers.
Then Actual Differences
Disaster Recovery requires a separate team that is solely focused on ways to avoid disasters and to be ready to follow protocol when a disaster strikes. It requires training, infrastructure, updated knowledge and so on. So, not surprisingly, the things eventually boil down to money. It takes a lot of money to invest in a team that only works on securing your data. The company needs to have a well-trained in-house team and the management needs to constantly put in efforts to make sure that the team is updated with the latest factors involved with disaster recovery. It is then up to the spending capacity of a company to decide whether they can afford a team inhouse or if they would want to hire the services of a company that offers Disaster Recovery. The research found out that many companies look towards DRaaS providers to reduce the costs of their company by removing the inhouse DR team.
A not-so-common thought
A lot of companies are slowly realizing the real reason why it’s just better to accept the services of a DRaaS provider. A major reason is that the inhouse DR team and the solutions that they set up mostly stay idle. Disaster does not typically strike very often, so all of the manpower and infrastructure that companies invest in are siphoning money from them without any actual payback. Such reasons are the catalysts that provoke cost-cutting by hiring subscriptions from DRaaS providers.
Difference in Service
Having an on-site team for DR is nothing short of a burden as you have to regularly update the team’s knowledge, software, hardware and protocols. This diverts the capital and the attention of the heads of the company towards disaster recovery when they could simply invest all that towards the actual goals of the company. Using a DRaaS provider can help a company to cut costs and remove the diversion of attention from DR to the actual growth of the company. While DR is necessary for a company to fight a disaster, it does not really help with the actual growth of the company. So subscribing to a DRaaS provider instead of diverting the attention, workforce, capital, time and infrastructure to an inhouse DR team is simply a cheaper and smarter option.
The world is highly dependent on the IT sector which is blooming and growing at rapid speed all over the world. The precautions taken by various companies to secure their data, hardware, software and other aspects can be the difference between a company pulling through or going bankrupt. With millions of clients depending on IT giants and other companies, it is becoming a smarter option to hire DRaaS providers to keep things going without too many hiccups.
