The importance of off-site data storage and back-up is well established and usually budgeted for within most organisations. If an issue occurs with your systems, it is essential to have access to the back-up data in order to restore the business to full operational efficiency. It is well known that organisations did not always give sufficient priority to the back-up processes with tape and off-site storage of media viewed historically as somewhat clunky solutions.
The Web has changed everything — not just multinationals but also SMEs are required to be ‘always on’ with customers and partners demanding service provision 24 x 365. Now the primary focus of many leading organisations is Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC and DR), from instant failover to alternative IT resources with recovery time objectives (RTO) of seconds, minutes or perhaps hours. All such solutions, of course, still depend on the retention and availability of all of your data assets, so backup remains an integral component.
“Businesses are accustomed to providing for mitigating traditional disasters like flooding, fires etc., but it has not seeped into the fibre of corporate decision making to provide for a ‘modern disaster’”
Today, utilising advanced progress in the power and flexibility of cloud, Business Continuity can be delivered as-a-Service. Several years ago vCloud.ie identified this as a key requirement of Irish enterprises, whether SME or enterprise clients.vCloud.ie has developed a managed cloud BC solution in response to emerging trends and demands with input from its extensive client base.
vCloud.ie will deliver an appropriate business continuity service to match the level of protection required by the client. As it is a managed service, the client does not necessarily need in-house resources or training. Where in-house expertise does exist, vCloud.ie is happy to work closely with IT teams in designing and implementing a comprehensive business continuity solution.
The vCloud.ie service comes as three packages: BC Enterprise, BC Lite, BC Essential.
The key distinctions relate largely to the Recovery Time Objective and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO). BC Enterprise is aimed at organisations requiring RTO and RPO times of zero seconds — highly available. BC Enterprise Lite differs in speed of recovery, providing RTO and RPO figures in seconds or at most minutes. BC Essential is aimed at smaller organisations which do not need or cannot make an economic business case for the highest speed recovery.
A key component of these BC solutions is that they have no impact on production. vCloud.ie has developed innovative technology where re-starts or reboots are not required. That applies to the initial commissioning and testing, which takes place in a ‘sandbox’ environment and does not require any scheduled downtime. Equally important is that the same applies to actual failover when it is triggered or invoked, subject only to the agreed levels of RTO/RPO.
Businesses are accustomed to providing for mitigating traditional disasters like flooding, fires etc., but it has not seeped into the fibre of corporate decision making to provide for a ‘modern disaster’. Mission critical applications can be protected by vCloud.ie with out of the box turnkey solutions and in a manner that does not require any CapEx.
Some larger client organisations choose to self-manage through the vCloud.ie management portal. vCloud.ie also offers a consultancy service in designing the full on-site or off-site BC solution. The vCloud.ie packages are designed to provide organisations with certainty when it comes to the critical task of ensuring the organisation’s data assets and key systems do not fail. Most organisations at the senior level regard this is an essential component of modern business development.
Günter Bayer is a co-founder and director of vCloud.ie
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