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Cloud Continuity: Disaster Planning for Cloud Disruptions
Cloud computing elements are increasingly being architected as a key piece of business continuity plans. With the cloud, even if office buildings burn down, data is still safe in the cloud.
The problem is though, what if something happens to your data in the cloud?
For example, last October, Stephen Spector, Cloud Evangelist at HP, wrote that “we have made the decision to double-down on our private and managed cloud capabilities.” And with that, HP announced that they will shut down their public cloud operations by the end of January, less than four months after the announcement. In cases like this, users need to scramble to find alternatives. If your on-premise vendor goes belly up, the software continues to run on your servers, usually providing you plenty of time to come up with an alternative.
If cloud businesses shutter their operations, what happens to the businesses that have been relying on them? The shutdown of any cloud operation could be very disruptive to a business, but the shutdown of SaaS operations, in particular, can cause real havoc; businesses need to identify alternative applications, deploy those apps, and migrate their data.
A survey by IDG Research Services found that:
- Three-quarters of enterprises say that it is ‘critical’ or ‘very important’ for their business to have uninterrupted access to their applications and data
- One-quarter of business applications are cloud based
- Half of enterprises think that the risks of SaaS are greater than the risks of on-premise computing
It is imperative that businesses think ahead and develop continuity plans for possible interruptions that detail how both operations and data could be recovered and moved after a disaster or shutdown.
