Table of Contents
- Summary
- DR/BCaaS Primer
- Report Methodology
- Decision Criteria Analysis
- Evaluation Metrics
- Key Criteria: Impact Analysis
- Analyst’s Take
- Methodology
- About GigaOm
- Copyright
1. Summary
Disaster recovery (DR) provides rapid restoration of one or more applications or systems when the data center where they reside is, or might become, unavailable. The recovery usually happens by transitioning into a different data center that is not affected by the outage at the primary location. Business continuity (BC) adds more awareness of the business and its requirements for continued operation. DR/BC as a service (DR/BCaaS) lets customers outsource this protection and recovery to a service provider who manages the recovery location and charges on a consumption basis for the protection of resources and any use of the recovery data center. The as-a-service nature of DR/BCaaS means that customers can easily increase or decrease the number of protected systems as business requirements change.
Many customers adopt DR/BCaaS to take advantage of an operational expense (OpEx)-based cloud consumption model, rather than incur the capital expense (CapEx) of building and operating a recovery data center. Often DR/BCaaS providers have a backup as a service (BaaS) background and use their backup store as the source for recovery, adding value to the BaaS product.
Recovery as a service means that recovery capacity is allocated as tests or failovers occur, with fees being charged only when recovery resources are provisioned. DR/BCaaS is useful to small businesses that require a DR strategy but do not have the resources for a second site. Medium-sized businesses may well standardize on DR/BCaaS because they do not see managing a DR solution as differentiating to their business. Both small and medium businesses will tend to use DR/BCaaS for all their DR requirements. Enterprise-scale organizations may have on-premises DR capability but use DR/BCaaS in places where their main DR is not well suited, such as where failover to another on-premises data center might introduce excessive latency or violate data sovereignty regulations.
Ransomware has overtaken human error and natural disasters as the top cause of DR failover. DR/BCaaS can provide a better ransomware recovery than on-premises recovery because there is often a much more restricted network connecting the infected on-premises environment and the DR/BCaaS recovery solution, which reduces the risk of reinfection. For established DR/BCaaS vendors, improving ransomware response is a significant area of development.
This GigaOm Key Criteria report details the criteria and evaluation metrics for selecting an effective DR/BCaaS solution. The companion GigaOm Radar report identifies vendors and products that excel in those criteria and metrics. Together, these reports provide an overview of the category and its underlying technology, identify leading DR/BCaaS offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.
How to Read this Report
This GigaOm report is one of a series of documents that helps IT organizations assess competing solutions in the context of well-defined features and criteria. For a fuller understanding, consider reviewing the following reports:
Key Criteria report: A detailed market sector analysis that assesses the impact that key product features and criteria have on top-line solution characteristics—such as scalability, performance, and TCO—that drive purchase decisions.
GigaOm Radar report: A forward-looking analysis that plots the relative value and progression of vendor solutions along multiple axes based on strategy and execution. The Radar report includes a breakdown of each vendor’s offering in the sector.
Solution Profile: An in-depth vendor analysis that builds on the framework developed in the Key Criteria and Radar reports to assess a company’s engagement within a technology sector. This analysis includes forward-looking guidance around both strategy and product.