Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 12 | Page 50

FEATURE: DISASTER RECOVERY market is expected to grow by a CAGR of 52.9% from $1.42bn in 2015 to $11.92bn in 2020. There are four key arguments in favour of DRaaS: Increased flexibility If an organisation chooses to have a physical secondary site for their DR services, then it is essential that this site be a carbon copy of the primary production site. This can be an extremely daunting task in of itself but even if done properly, there is the burden of having to continuously monitor the systems to ensure that they are synchronised. The advantage of DRaaS is that this synchronisation can be abstracted. Another advantage of DRaaS is that depending on the disaster mode, the organisation can select from a variety of options for how to handle the different business systems. 1 Since most of the processes are automated, opting for a DRaaS solution also frees up IT resources and gives them the flexibility to focus on business critical applications, that can yield tangible business benefits, rather than on support functions. 2 Reduced costs Organisations that choose to deploy physical secondary sites to support DR services have to make a significant CapEX outlay associated with the physical infrastructure, hardware and software licenses and regular maintenance. DRaaS on the other hand works on a subscription/’pay-as-you-go’ model. Organisations only have to pay for the services they uses which works out to be extremely cost effective, particularly for smaller organisations that are cash strapped or for organisations whose DR requirements might frequently scale up or down. 3 More robust testing Regularly testing the DR system is a key part of any BC/DR strategy. Unfortunately given the synchronisation issues with traditional DR systems, testing is both extremely expensive and time consuming which is why 50 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com