Future proofing enterprise operations has always been critical, but the importance of having disaster recovery plans in place has never been clearer than it is in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global challenges like the coronavirus affect all businesses, interrupting processes and service delivery and—in some unfortunate cases—compromising a business’s ability to recover.
As a vital part of enterprise planning, disaster recovery strategies anticipate these scenarios and help protect employees’ ability to work and safeguard processes, data and services against disruption. Especially as data becomes an enterprise’s most important asset, protecting that data and ensuring its accessibility throughout any circumstance is paramount for long-term success.
To guide businesses as they seek to understand disaster recovery and implement thorough plans for today and tomorrow, we’ve put together some helpful tips.
Exploring Disaster Recovery Options
Disaster recovery plans come in many different forms that suit many different use cases and business requirements. In order to understand what services will suit your business, the first step in any strategy should be outlining the scope and objectives of the business continuity plan. Next, one of the most crucial choices in this process is allying with a trusted data center provider that can deliver on those objectives. Identifying a facility and a disaster recovery partner that can securely and reliably house IT infrastructure is vital.
Some of the most common (and most critical) elements to look for in a provider’s disaster recovery offerings are:
- Robust, Strategic Facilities – Having a firm foundation of security is important, and the key to this is locating providers that offer both geographic benefits and physical resilience. This means leveraging independent power grids, residing above the 500-year flood plain, remaining outside of earthquake and tornado zones and having high wind ratings to protect against weather-based dangers. Data center essentials like efficient cooling, redundant power and 24x7x365 layered physical and network security are imperative here as well.
- Multi-Site Redundancy – Having backups and failover opportunities in place in the event of a disaster is key to keeping data and service availability up. When it comes to a data center provider delivering multi-site strategies, customers are gaining access to vital geographical redundancy. This ensures that even in the event of a data center outage or a natural disaster in one area, services can still be delivered through secondary locations.
- Expert On-Site Staff – Access to tenured technicians and engineers allows businesses to leverage an extra layer of reassurance should they need managed services such as network management, structured cabling, network security or virtual hands. A consultative approach backed by thorough and specialized experience—instead of by contractors—ensures that mission-critical data can remain in the care of the partner the enterprise trusts. So, if and when businesses must rely on the provider’s staff, they know that their data is in good hands.
- Flexibility and Customization – Every business environment and requirement is different, and a partner that offers a deeper understanding of personalized objectives while avoiding one-size-fits-all solutions gives the enterprise an edge.
How Data Foundry Can Help
Disaster recovery isn’t just for extraordinary circumstances like COVID-19. These plans also help protect businesses against natural disasters, man-made errors, cyberattacks and more. It’s for this reason that Data Foundry makes it a priority to help businesses secure their data, their operations, their service continuity and their customers’ trust.
We not only deliver the complete disaster recovery service package, we go a step further to ensure IT equipment and the teams that manage it are taken care of. Data Foundry understands that while protecting data is essential, peace of mind is a true asset in an era of uncertainty. This is why our facilities offer dedicated office space and amenities like fully stocked break rooms, cots, showers, lockers and more. The facilities also remain close to international airports, hotels, restaurants and retail centers to make sure that customer and on-site teams have everything they need close by should unexpected events occur.
These are challenging times—but we’re with our customers every step of the way. If you’d like to learn more about our disaster recovery and business continuity services, please click here.
To get timely updates on the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures Data Foundry is taking to protect its employees, customers and communities, you can visit our COVID-19 resource center here.
