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DATA BACKUP OR BUSINESS CONTINUITY – WHICH IS THE BEST CHOICE FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

Almost everyone who has used computers for any length of time has likely heard the same refrain: backup your data or you’ll be sorry! From the earliest days of computing it was clear that the complicated processes involved in operating the machines and the vagaries of other equipment such as power supplies (not to mention the threat of natural disasters) meant that saving your work in a secure location was essential. Over time, more sophisticated and powerful backup solutions were developed, allowing for ever larger amounts of data to be saved.

At some point, the ability to save massive amounts of data reached a level where forward thinkers in the industry began to contemplate doing more than simply saving data; they began to realise that whilst restoring data after a power outage or computer crash was important, it was now possible to do something more. That something more was to mirror an organisation’s operating environment so that it could rapidly restore complete IT functionality in the event of a system outage. Called business continuity (BC), this type of approach is well suited to operating in a world in which nearly 24/7 IT system availability is widely expected by customers and business partners.

Both data backup (DB) and business continuity processes have their place in modern IT system planning. This guide will discuss the difference between the two approaches and why you might want to choose one or the other, or both, depending on your company’s IT infrastructure

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and business needs. While data backup is as important as ever, the ever-evolving scope of IT operations in today’s world has made it vital that an organisation’s IT assets function as continuously as possible – in such an environment combining data backup with business continuity functions makes increasingly more sense.

The difference between data back-up and business continuity

Backup refers to the process of storing and saving your existing data on a different storage platform, and often at a different location, than your main system. It is typically accomplished by copying files to another disk located on a different computer, via a tape backup, or using a backup solution in the cloud. The technology used to backup data has changed over time, but the core process has remained the same. Backup allows you to preserve important data for future access should your system crash or otherwise malfunction at some point – if it does, data can be restored from the backup platform.

Whilst backing up data may seem tedious at times, the value of doing so becomes apparent when an IT system crisis occurs. Losing weeks, months, or even years of valuable data because of an unexpected computer system or infrastructure crash can be calamitous for your business operations. By preventing such an event, data backup is well worth whatever time it takes to set up and perform the process. At the same time, it does not offer identical functionality to business continuity processes which focus not only on restoring your data but also on giving you access to your operating environment as a whole if your main system is unavailable.

Business Continuity

Business continuity software and processes are also sometimes known by the moniker disaster recovery; while business continuity encompasses more functionality than simply recovering from a disastrous system failure, the phrase does help highlight the difference between it and basic data backup services. Whilst data backup allows you to restore your company’s valuable data it doesn’t enable you to restore your complete operating system.

Business continuity processes allow you to do this by saving complete images of your company’s disk drives and servers. These mirrored copies can then be used to restore your system on an alternate platform if your main system is not available for some reason. A business continuity solution enables you to restore access to your system more rapidly than by reinstalling operating system software and copying backed up files.

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Whilst data backup processes are well suited to helping recover data in the event of an incident involving data theft or the malfunctioning of part of your IT system (a lost or malfunctioning laptop, for instance), backing up your files won’t help you regain access to your data if your whole system is down or unavailable; this is where business continuity comes in – major instances of system failure that require the re-creation of your operating environment, not just restoration of your data. BC allows you to continue IT operations in the event of the malfunctioning or shutdown of your main system.

The value of Business Continuity solutions

Customers expect highly reliable, nearly 24/7 access to a company’s IT resources. A business continuity solution allows you to provide this type of access. Strictly relying on DB solutions typically does not allow you to provide this level of service. While maintaining a BC solution will generally cost more than simply using data backup, such a solution can ultimately prove to be well worth the cost from a return on investment standpoint when everything is said and done.

There are several reasons for this: Downtime can be extremely expensive to your company from a productivity standpoint: The power of modern IT systems makes them extremely effective in improving a company’s operating efficiency. Conversely, if such systems are unavailable for any extended period of time, it can deal a costly blow to your company’s performance over that time – and perhaps longer, depending on how long it takes to recover from the disruption caused by the outage.

Downtime can also hurt your company from a reputational or customer perception standpoint: If your IT system is down for an extended period of time, it can damage customer perceptions of your company’s reliability. This, in turn, can lead to a reluctance among some customers to do business with your firm, hurting your profits.

Lost sales during an outage: A rising number of companies rely on digital processes to take orders – either directly or by providing contact information for customers. When a system outage prevents you from either taking new orders or from providing customers with contact information to place orders the resulting lost sales can directly impact your bottom line.

System outages can also result in significant opportunity costs: In today’s fast-paced business world timely communications are key to making the most of the opportunities available to your company. If system outages prevent your employees from following up on business opportunities in a timely manner it can result in lost revenues far in excess of what it might cost to obtain business continuity services.

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BC solutions can provide a number of other services beyond disaster recovery functionality. These include:

• BC can, in some cases, double as your data backup system.

• BC is helpful for testing upgrades, patches and new use cases to your main system. These can be run on a “virtual” version of the system to make sure there are no flaws in an upgrade or new software solution before it is added to your main system.

• If your IT system is working fine, but you have experienced major data loss or corruption, it may be more efficient to move to a BC environment to help diagnose and solve the problem rather than re-importing massive amounts of potentially corrupted data to your main system.

• The DR environment can be used to temporarily host applications and services during planned maintenance, migrations or training sessions.

Business Continuity or Data Backup?

When it comes to deciding whether BC or DB solutions are better for your company, there are a variety of factors to consider. In many cases it may be advisable to utilise both functions in one form or another, depending on the circumstances of your organisation’s operating environment.

Things to keep in mind while evaluating BC and DB solutions:

How vital is your IT system to your company’s business operations? Modern technology has advanced to such an extent that for many companies their IT systems are essential to their business operations. For these companies, securing a business continuity solution is highly advisable, as data backup, by itself, typically won’t provide them with the functionality necessary to quickly restore their IT infrastructure. Examples where such a scenario could apply include:

• An e-commerce business selling goods over the web. For such firms every minute, let alone hour, that their IT systems responsible for allowing customers to place and pay for orders are down is costly. An extended outage can lead to significant lost revenues, not to mention the reputational damage such an outage would cause.

• A law firm billing clients by the hour. For legal firms, any extended system outage which prevents its partners and associates from billing results in direct costs to the firm.

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Many more such examples where a company’s IT system plays a crucial part in its ability to function optimally could be provided. On the other hand, for some companies this is not the case. If your company does not vitally rely on continuous access to its IT system, basic data backup may be all that is required to protect your data in case of system malfunction or failure.

The combined approach

The power of modern data storage and imaging techniques is such that business continuity solutions are increasingly affordable for SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises). At the same time, there are different gradations of such services that your company can choose from depending on budget and the specific type of services that are most appropriate for your business.

Perhaps the best way of looking at your DB and BC needs is to take a combined approach to the two processes. Some business continuity solutions incorporate data backup, typically either via cloud storage or virtual machines (VM), along with disaster recovery measures. Combining the two functions, either in the same solution or by aligning their functionality across solutions, allows you to benefit from the synergy of taking an integrated approach as well as the opportunity of dealing with a single service provider if you are outsourcing the process.

A broad description of the types of BC services available (with associated DB services, if available) follows below. Please note that each of these approaches will have its own recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO). Generally speaking, the closer to real time you get in terms of RPO and RTO, the higher the cost of the service.

• Cold: This approach preserves and backs your data up and replicates your systems via system images or VMs that can be stored either in a local or remote location. No population of the recovery servers with data is performed until necessary. When a request is made to do so, starting of the servers takes place and data is loaded. The process can take some time; the time it takes to load depends upon the extent of your IT environment and the amount of data associated with it. You can choose which data snapshot to load as a means of avoiding recent data which has experienced corruption.

• Warm: As with the cold process, your data is backed up and your systems are replicated; however, in this process the servers or VMs are loaded on recovery servers right away. When a request is made, it is only necessary to load the data and start up the servers. As a result, system availability is much more rapid with this method. Similar to the cold approach, you can choose which data snapshot to upload.

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• Hot: This process keeps a redundant environment running alongside your primary IT system. Data is continuously synced between the systems. This approach may be associated with mission critical applications such as email or e-commerce ordering systems, as well as with entire IT operating environments. It offers the fastest method of recovery possible if your primary system fails.

Conclusion

As modern IT systems have grown in power and complexity, a corresponding need has arisen for a more effective means of restoring computer operations in the event of an outage or system malfunction. Whilst data backup solutions are still important when it comes to preserving a company’s vital data, it has become just as important, in many cases, to ensure that your IT infrastructure can be restored as quickly as possible in the event of an incident likely to cause significant downtime. Business continuity solutions provide a rapid and efficient method of restoring access to your vital IT assets as quickly as possible after an outage has occurred. They can be combined with data backup functionality, allowing you to take a comprehensive approach to maintaining the overall productivity of your IT infrastructure.

Contact your Bright representive today for more information:

333 Latimer Rd, London W10 6RA | 020 3031 9500

sales@bright.co