ST1801

STRATEGY:
STRATEGY: BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DR
STRICTLY BOARDROOM
ALEX CROWE, REGIONAL SALES EXECUTIVE AT ILAND, OUTLINES THE REASONS WHY CHOOSING
CLOUD-BASED BACKUP AND DR NEEDS TO BE A STRATEGIC DECISION TAKEN AT BOARD LEVEL
The benefits of cloud technology are
prompting more and more
organisations to investigate how the
scalability, security and economy it delivers
can give their businesses a competitive
edge. We're also seeing many customers
keen to use the cloud for its welldocumented
advantages in backup and
disaster recovery (DR). In the rush to realise
the benefits, however, many organisations
are failing to take a strategic approach to
their business continuity plans.
I recently took part in a webinar discussion
with participants from our partner CSN
Group, and our backup and disaster
recovery technology provider, VEEAM and I
was struck by how frequently we encounter a
purely tactical approach to backup and DR
that doesn't necessarily meet the strategic
needs of the business. While I can
understand how this situation has come
about, I firmly believe that it's time to open
up the dialogue between the IT department
and the C-suite and ensure that decisions
concerning business continuity and DR are
led from the boardroom.
BACKUP AND DR - TWO SIDES OF
THE SAME COIN
I often find that customers are looking
initially for either backup, or disaster
recovery, when actually what they really
need is a blend of both. Backup is about
having snapshots of data in time, which
might be required for compliance reasons
or when an end user has lost data that they
need restored, at a point in the future.
Disaster recovery is about the business
being able to continue to operate, with users
still having access to systems and revenue
generation uninterrupted, when something
has gone wrong.
David Schaap, CTO of CSN Group, made
a good working distinction between backup
and DR, noting that backup is driven by
requests from end users for data
restoration, while disaster recovery is
initiated at the executive level. So, backup
and Disaster Recovery each have different
use cases and are needed at different times
by the business but crucially, because they
make use of the same technology, they
should go hand-in-hand.
GOOD DECISION-MAKING
HAMPERED BY BAD
COMMUNICATION
When it comes to selecting the technology
used for backup and DR it's usually down to
the company's IT managers to make the
decision, based on their knowledge of the
organisation's current systems and
operations. It's a bottom-up process that I
believe sits at odds with the fact that the
business continuity strategy that the
technology is supposed to support is set by
the C-suite.
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24 STORAGE
Jan/Feb 2018
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