We all know that the protection of data and systems is crucial to business continuity. Any loss of that data could be catastrophic. Disasters are inevitable in the life of an organization – whether man-made, natural or mechanical – and inevitably cause mayhem when machines storing valuable data become unavailable.

Disaster recover strategies help organizations protect their data, systems and IT infrastructures. The principal mission of DR is to return IT operations to an agreed and acceptable level of performance as quickly as possible following a failure. In addition, customers are increasingly challenged by external regulations to provethey are able to recover their systems. The healthcare industry for example, has to adhere to the strict policies of HIPPA, or risk heavy penalties and loss of accreditation.

However, disaster recover processes typically require technical skills, hardware and facilities, and many organizations are now turning to Disaster Recover as a Service (DRaaS) specialists to manage the testing of their DR strategy. Although DRaaS has grown in recent years, there are other options available in the market. Cristie Software’s recovery simulation software – Recover Console – allows customers to simulate both scheduled and instant recoveries into a physical, virtual or cloud environment to validate the reliability of their protects. This allows users to exploit cloud technology, such as SoftLayer, to get clear recover assurance, or to provide a type of DIY DRaaS offering to customers.

And for DR testing and the execution of DR plans, there is now a good case to replicate protect data into the cloud, and then recover that same cloud data to an operational cloud environment using, for example, IBM TSM, TBMR (Cristie’s bare machine recover for TSM) and Recover Console. This avoids having to bring the data back on premise and decreases risks associated with network connectivity or other infrastructure issues that might affect recover time objectives (RTOs).

With the level of investment organizations are making in cloud technology (estimated $13B in the US alone in 2014), it’s time to explore what these solutions can provide for your company and get a little recover assurance.

This blog post is authored by Cristie Software and originally appeared on CAS Severn website