Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) provides your business with a cost-effective way to manage DR without the added expense of technical staff and technology. Yet in today’s world, with the multitude of disaster recovery “flavors” to choose from, selecting a DRaaS provider involves more than just selecting an off-site data center or deploying backup circuits.

Your requirements are unique. Take a close look at your IT assets, services, and data that are mission-critical. How long can your business be without service before you feel the negative effects? For some, it could be hours. For others, like financial institutions and high-traffic retailers, even minutes of downtime could result in significant losses for the company. Look for a DRaaS provider that offers a variety of solutions to fit your specific recovery time objectives.

Just as important as recovery time is the process of failover during the event of an outage. Is it manual or triggered automatically? Once normal systems are recovered, what does the handover back to the primary state look like? Ensuring the process meets your business requirements is equally important as securing your data, because the resources needed to manage the process may not always be available during an outage.

Finally, how much DR is too much? IT budgets are being forced to do more with less these days. Just as with your life, health, and auto insurance, it’s important to make sure you’re “overprotecting” and spending more than you think you should on DRaaS solutions. By assessing downtime costs, determining potential risks and business impacts, and comparing alternative plans and benefits, you can determine how much DR is needed to support your specific business needs.

Need help in evaluating a DRaaS solution for your business? Give LanYap a call. We’ll help you evaluate your options and determine a solution that meets the needs of your business.