Prioritizing the IT and technology needs of a business while ensuring the IT budget is being used effectively is arguably the biggest challenge facing CIOs and CTOs today. According to the October 2011 Forrester Research, Inc. report, ?BC/DR Remain Priorities for 2012 But Take a Backseat to Cost-Saving and Efficiency Initiatives,? by Stephanie Balaouras, enterprises continue to spend an average of 6 percent of their budget on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) efforts but in terms of overall priorities, BCDR will take a backseat to consolidation, business intelligence and virtualization. The fact that these technologies have such a high priority makes the argument even stronger for BCDR.
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Historically, the way technology solutions were developed and deployed, IT had to struggle with allocating budget dollars, which often meant limiting investments in certain areas to cover other more pressing or "squeakier" needs. Technology solutions typically were one-hit wonders: They addressed one or maybe two business needs at most, so prioritizing these needs is what became the challenge. BCDR solutions were no exception.
But when you take into consideration the areas enterprises are looking to invest in ? virtualization, infrastructure consolidation and cloud computing ? the reality is these technologies are not discrete solutions like their predecessors. In fact, much of the hype around these technologies has to do with the versatility they bring to IT and the businesses they support. By taking an overarching view of the organization, what needs to be achieved, and how technology can help, these solutions can and should be linked, including BCDR.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery in the Cloud Brings a Whole New Level of Cost Efficiency and Ease
Business continuity and disaster recovery solutions designed specifically for maintaining the ongoing operation of key business systems during a major event have traditionally been achieved via full physical backups and total replication. This most often doubled the cost of IT infrastructure needs, giving BCDR a reputation for being expensive and often unattainable. But virtualization and cloud-based solutions have blown the BCDR physical paradigm out of the water. Businesses can use the cloud to better meet Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) in an easier and more cost-effective way.
At the end of the day, most make-or-break BCDR budget decisions come down to how important, or mission critical, achieving a particular RTO and RPO objective is. In an ideal world, all businesses would choose the best possible RTO and RPO as possible. Who wouldn?t? But the reality is, when executives are shown the cost of a BCDR solution, all of a sudden the conversation moves from having the absolute best results to what amount of data or work loss is acceptable. Enter cloud computing and the pay-as-you-use model. Gone are the days where companies need to continually pay for additional compute resources for the occasional chance they may need them. Not to mention companies that own their own data centers and have redundancy and fail over efforts built in. This equates translating to additional infrastructure investments that are most likely rarely used.
By using cloud services for virtualized servers, storage, desktops and applications, businesses can ensure a redundant solution that meets their RTO and RPO objectives with minimal capital expenditures required. Additionally, data centers built for cloud services can offer BCDR not just at an inter-data-center level but at an intra-data-center level ? providing an initial failover point locally before even having to physically leave the primary data center.
The latest innovation in BCDR and where it is evolving is a complete, truly end-to-end strategy. Virtualization and cloud will allow for everything from the desktop to the data center and anything in between to ultimately have a BCDR solution available without breaking the bank.
BCDR Is Not Just About Preparing for Major Disasters
Hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, earthquakes or any type of catastrophic event are typically what come to mind when companies think about their strategy for business continuity and disaster recovery. But the reality is that BCDR is about ensuring the business can continue to operate no matter what type of event or service interruption occurs. However, in a bottom-line-driven world, IT departments and executive teams cannot afford to bankrupt the business for the ?what might happen? scenario.
In the end, it is up to the enterprise to determine how much risk their business can afford and what the best BCDR solution for their business is. The good news is that, thanks to virtualization and cloud computing, the options are ever increasing while costs are decreasing, providing companies with economical solutions that provide even better BCDR coverage than ever before.
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Translation ? eventually every aspect of the business will be able to be BCDR?d.
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