Technology can be a frightening thing, especially to those without a firm understanding of how it works and what can be accomplished. Take, for instance, the advent of the steam locomotive in the 1800s. In spite of the numerous advantages it offered, many people were afraid that, at speeds topping 30 mph, their bodies simply wouldn’t hold up to the stress of traveling that fast.
The same sort of fear and hesitation that kept people from riding steam locomotives is still present today when it comes to adopting new and improved technologies. When the cloud first debuted, many companies were highly skeptical of this new and then-untested technology. Years later, companies are moving beyond skepticism to adopt effective strategies to utilize the cloud to its full potential.
Embracing the Cloud With DRaaS
So what is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)? It’s a solution that takes what service providers know about disaster recovery (DR) to ensure continuity within the cloud infrastructure. Instead of facing capital expenditures for physical DR infrastructure, businesses can instead leverage the economies of scale offered through the cloud.
By embracing DRaaS solutions instead of traditional recovery services, customers can effectively utilize cloud infrastructures to host critical production applications and workloads with business continuity in mind. With successful failover testing, skeptical companies can overcome the fear of the unknown and acclimate to cloud-based DR solutions. This can help eliminate much of the fear and dread that comes with moving workloads to a seemingly unfamiliar environment.
Where to Begin?
It’s important for service providers to understand how a good start can help cultivate long-term success. Using DRaaS as an entry point for approaching a cloud services strategy can not only be beneficial for establishing a robust offering within a service provider’s portfolio, but it can also help providers expand their customer bases through established offerings.
Embracing DRaaS is not just considered the fastest way for businesses to join the cloud, but also the fastest-growing way. According to a recent Gartner report, DRaaS is set to become one of the fastest-growing sectors within the cloud market, overtaking traditional recovery services by 2018. Today, few people think much of boarding today’s locomotives that regularly surpass 200 mph. With DRaaS as the established gateway for a host of cloud services, few companies will see any problem with embracing the cloud.