We now live in an interconnected, global 24/7 society and whatever industry or vertical that you work in, there’s no room for an outage
Even shortest periods of downtime can cause havoc, especially since many businesses now rely on a multitude of IT operations to keep running and need constant access to data.
Our research shows that nearly half of IT professionals feel they have less than an hour to recover business-critical data before it starts impacting revenue. Whether this is air traffic control whose IT systems rely on constant access to proprietary data to manage their take off and landings, or healthcare providers who rely on having uninterrupted data to provide their patients with appropriate treatment. In the first half of 2019, 6.4 million ransomware attacks against UK business were recorded, representing a 195% increase from the previous year. This makes the UK among the most targeted regions in the world, and highlights that more needs to be done to not only protect themselves but be able to bounce back from a disaster or attack quickly.
Don’t rely on just backup and recovery
Traditionally, backups that are designed to protect vital systems and applications are based on Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), illustrating how much data you can stand to lose, and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), how long it will take to recover.
However, in today’s economy this approach to backup has now become ineffective as the smallest interruption or delay in accessing data is now impossible to absorb. Therefore, businesses need to transition from solely backup and recovery to never needing to recover in the first place by having true ‘constant availability’ of data. High availability can be hard to grasp at times, particularly with the way the solution is often marketed and how it differs from conventional types of backup.
Firstly, what isn’t high availability? Solutions which require manual failover that involves switching to a standby system, which increases the gap between detecting issues and mitigating them, can’t be considered high availability as it’s not automatic. This not only leaves IT professionals unable to have real constant access to their data, but also complicates the whole process.
These delays may be acceptable in certain industries where constant access to data isn’t a necessity, but in many industries, such as in healthcare or banking, data is always needed and if there isn’t constant access (especially during a disruption) it can lead to severe consequences both financially and when it comes to reputation.
Be resilient in an always-on IT environment
Businesses should instead be turning to solutions which provide ‘heartbeat’ automatic failover, where there is no delay, enhanced with a journal-based process capable of replicating data in real-time. They should also look for solutions which are platform ‘agnostic’, and can protect a variety of different environments, whether data is in a public and private clouds, on-premise or in virtualised environments. Multi-environment replication can provide businesses both with the flexibility which they need to take advantage of today IT environments, with the availability to alleviate anyl issues and ensure that critical data can always be accessed.
Reap the benefits of high availability
Businesses which can ensure that they have high data availability across all the platforms, will be able to reap the benefits of the 24/7 economy, always-on environment. For the many businesses that still rely heavily on conscious access to data, the short disruptions that are inherent in traditional methods of backup leaves them vulnerable to an outage. However, with the right solutions catered for the modern age, businesses can now reap the benefits of the data-centric economy at zero risk.
