Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solutions provide businesses with failover insurance to cloud computing environments. Business owners and IT management teams will sign on with a third-party DRaaS provider to reduce the burdens of continuously backing up business data. The business sets standards for data storage, and outlines plans for information recovery after data loss. These products provide a level of security in case of a large-scale data breach or mechanical failure. Instead of using their own infrastructure to prevent data loss, third-party vendors keep all information stored off-site, isolating the environment from the business’s main network. In the case of a disaster, DRaaS providers will enact their set plan, reducing or eliminating downtime for business applications, customer-facing products, and internal networks. DRaaS offerings can provide similar solutions as backup software, but offer more functionality as information is stored completely separately from normal company data. Backup software is better suited for minor incidents and small amounts of data being lost, but DRaaS solutions fail over into the cloud, keeping applications running normally.
To qualify for inclusion in the DRaaS category, a product must:
- Provide failover capabilities for cloud computing environments
- Provide third-party configuration and management
- Store all information externally and off-site
- Operate on a pay-per-use model
