In principle, disaster recovery can exist without the cloud. Business-critical resources can be protected in-house using classic approaches for disaster recovery. Traditional disaster recovery differs from cloud disaster recovery concepts in three aspects:

  1. Complexity and maintenance effort
  2. Costs and flexibility
  3. Security

A crucial difference between cloud DR and classic DR is the effort associated with setting up and maintaining the necessary hardware and software for backup and recovery. Companies that opt for a cloud DR plan benefit from technologies being outsourced which means they don’t need to be set up and administered on a company’s premises. In addition, the provider renting out the cloud resources typically oversees complex interactions of the individual components and the maintenance of the hardware.

This, in turn, reduces the cost of cloud disaster recovery because businesses don’t need to procure expensive hardware and require minimal staff to manage the recovery solution in the cloud. There are also no follow-up costs for defective and obsolete hardware. If more resources are needed, they can be conveniently added at any time.

The third advantage of cloud DR is the high security standard provided by cloud service providers or software houses, which not only encompasses digital security of the data – achieved through security and encryption software – but storing data in external data centers also provides for better protection against on-site data theft, natural disasters, or fires.

Posted by Charlie Brown