It’s a new age for hot site disaster recovery

According to Naveen Chhabra, senior analyst at Forrester Research, the best approach an organization can take when deciding on a BCDR strategy — especially when it comes to hot sites — is to understand the current risks. “Ten years ago, we talked about wildfires as a once-in-a-decade risk; now they are twice as frequent and more intense, ” he said. Similarly, cyberthreats have increased significantly in recent years.

“Risks are changing in intensity and frequency, so organizations must be prepared,” Chhabra said.

Organizations must then drill down and determine exactly which apps are needed and the optimal recovery point objective and recovery time objective.

“In essence, you need to do a business risk assessment on each of those applications and then figure how to deliver the uptime you need,” Chhabra said. The bottom line: A hot site is no longer a fix you simply slap onto your business.

“The fact of the matter is, if you need a hot site, you probably already have one,” Goodwin said. There are many alternatives for sustaining those mission-critical applications to consider. “By our estimation, there are several thousand cloud providers that offer some kind of DRaaS, ranging from the DIY end of the scale to white glove service,” he said.

Equally important, many of these services are focused on the needs of specific industries or applications. For example, Goodwin said, if you are in retail, manufacturing or at a smaller financial services organization like a community bank, there are clouds that cater to that specific market. “They will know the type of SLAs you need, and they will be geared to deliver that, ” he said.