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When companies develop their data protection and disaster recovery strategies, they often assemble them using disparate solutions. Using multiple backup and recovery tools can lead to confusion.

Confusion slows recovery times, and taking too long to recover from a downtime event can come at a big cost. The Uptime Institute’s Abnormal Incident Report (AIR) for 2018 found that a third of all reported outages cost the affected companies over $250,000. Other companies lose over $1 million. The costs of an outage can include lost revenue, productivity, and customer attrition.

When an outage strikes, the thing an organization needs most is a clear path to recovery.

A single pane of glass makes data protection and disaster recovery more reliable and easier to manage so you can ensure that your data is protected and your applications are recoverable, regardless of the cause of the outage. 

Why Use a Single Data-Protection Tool?

single-data-protection-toolA jerry-rigged data protection strategy could be a ticking time bomb. A company that uses multiple backup and recovery tools lacks visibility into backups. IT managers and administrators are among the busiest employees in the organization.  Imagine the additional work involved with managing separate backup software solutions for say cloud data, then yet another for customer-owned infrastructure and then yet another for disaster recovery.  Add to that the burden of managing multiple data centers and the infrastructure to support these solutions and the complexity begins to become unmanageable.

A single data-protection tool that includes the capability to easily manage the backup of all data (cloud and private) as well as an automated disaster recovery solution is not only able to significantly reduce complexity but it can also lead to better outcomes during a downtime event.

Using the Cloud for Offsite Backup & Disaster Recovery

Many companies rely on a secondary physical location for backup and recovery. Building a secondary data center for data protection and disaster recovery is expensive. The primary and secondary sites also need to be connected and synchronized to achieve optimal recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs).

Using cloud for data protection and disaster recovery eliminates the drawbacks of a secondary data center and gives your business a unified solution with management through a single pane of glass. Hybrid cloud is ideal for data protection and disaster recovery. The public cloud aspect of hybrid cloud allows for instant failover and eliminates the high cost of maintaining a secondary data center.

Choosing a Cloud Data Protection Partner

choosing-a-cloud-data-protection-partnerThe cloud market can be difficult to navigate when looking for cloud backup and disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS). However, some providers stand above the rest. FirstLight’s DRaaS solution, powered by Veeam, offers Cloud Connect for data protection and disaster recovery.

FirstLight’s solution allows for replication and backup to a secure, FirstLight cloud. This gives you the ability to achieve aggressive RPO and RTO targets over FirstLight’s low latency fiber network.  Another benefit to a regional cloud provider like FirstLight is that you don’t have to design a solution completely on your own. You’ll have guidance and support from a staff that has helped numerous companies achieve their data protection and disaster recovery goals.

Harnessing the Cloud for Data Protection

A single data-protection solution should extend beyond backup to include disaster recovery and the protection of cloud data — such as Microsoft Office 365 data. Giving your IT staff the tools they need to properly manage your data and recover systems should be easy. And it can be.

FirstLight gives our customers access to diverse and powerful backup solutions. We are a one-stop shop for cloud storage, Veeam licensing, and ongoing support. Through our robust data centers and secure cloud infrastructure, we offer hybrid cloud backup, DRaaS, Veeam Cloud Connect, and backup for Microsoft Office 365.

For more information on backup, disaster recovery, and cloud computing, be sure to attend the Cloud Connect Summit in Seacoast New Hampshire on May 8th, sponsored by FirstLight, Veeam, LightRiver, and Ciena. Tech Talk subscribers can register free using code “Techtalk.”

REGISTER NOW.

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