Most businesses recognise the need for a disaster recovery plan, but they often are unwilling or unable to bear the cost of building a functional secondary site.
A hybrid cloud solution such as VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC on AWS) offers a low-risk, simplified option that ensures their business continuity site can continue to operate on the same level of efficiencies as their primary infrastructure.
The ability to do so has never been more critical as it is now amidst the global pandemic, where companies find themselves suddenly having to support a fully remote workforce and, along with it, multiple work sites.
Unfortunately, conversations about disaster recovery often fall by the wayside and revolve around the bare minimum organisations feel they can get away with. There is general reluctance to invest in backup infrastructure that may never need to be activated.
"It always comes down to cost and how much an organisation is willing to pay to mitigate the risk of a potential disruption," says John Ferlito, AC3's Head of Product and Technology.
"CIOs can find it difficult to justify the cost of maintaining a disaster recovery site to the business team and, often, decisions are made around cutting down capacity, the number of applications, and the number of virtual machines they want to run in the secondary site," Ferlito notes. "It's always a compromise."
This may not be the case with a cloud solution, since businesses don’t pay for what they don’t use. Simply put, they pay for the infrastructure only when they need their disaster recovery plan to kick in.
Organisations that run VMware in their data centre can further simplify their deployment by utilising their current skillset without the need for additional training, according to Briant Kareroa, AC3's ANZ Sales Manager, Public Sector.
With little setup cost, organisations then only need to purchase capacity by the minute and only while their disaster recovery site is running, Kareroa says. "If the disruption lasts four hours, you only need to pay for that four hours. It's a very low-risk option for companies," he adds.
While there is a baseline fee organisations pay to test and ensure their workloads continue to function and critical data is replicated on the cloud platform, the secondary site can run at only a fraction of the cost they otherwise will have to pay in a traditional on-premises model.
Companies can also choose to run their disaster recovery site in any location the cloud services provider supports. AWS, for instance, has more than 70 Availability Zones in more than 20 geographic regions worldwide including Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.
New infrastructure needed for remote workforce
Deploying a VMC on AWS solution also delivers the elasticity and flexibility organisations need to support a remote workforce that operates from different locations. COVID-19 has underscored the need for businesses to rethink how they run their ICT infrastructure in order to mitigate disruptions to their workforce.
Ferlito notes: "Employees are accessing corporate data from multiple points across the internet, rather than within the confines of the private network that's running in the office. This means businesses will have to ensure they have the capacity and security capabilities in place to deal with a workforce that is now fully remote."
And they can do so quickly and easily with VMC on AWS.
How can AC3 help you? Call us on 02 9199 0888 or email [email protected] to find out how Australia's premier secure hybrid cloud specialist can help your business recover from any disruption, at a fraction of the price.
