In today’s data-driven business environment, enterprises must wrangle a massive amount of information every day. The success of many businesses relies on a large amount of that data being available essentially every second of every day. There isn’t any wiggle room when it comes to securing business-critical data and applications. Enterprises have to implement bulletproof backup and business continuity solutions to ensure they don’t miss a beat in the event of an unplanned outage or disaster.
The cloud plays a huge role in creating a secure place to back up enterprise data, especially now that businesses are dealing with disruptions resulting from a significant rise in ransomware, cybercrime, and highly unpredictable weather patterns. These days, you never know when a hurricane (or two!) might threaten your company’s technology center.
All cloud backup solutions are not created equal, so it is important to do your due diligence when selecting the best fit enterprise cloud backup solution for your organization. Here are five things you need to consider before making a decision:
Environment
Today’s enterprise environments are complex. Businesses are running their applications on different operating systems and different platforms. Some organizations are running on fully cloud-based infrastructures, some have kept everything on-premises, and some have a foot in both camps.
Your cloud backup solution has to be able to navigate effortlessly among these different variables and provide ironclad protection against data loss whether you’re backing up physical or virtual environments.
There are several ways you can employ a cloud backup solution depending on your organization’s needs and business objectives:
- Direct to cloud: Some Backup-as-a-Service solutions also provide Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (BaaS/DRaaS) capabilities. These tools require zero on-premises hardware, and they scale to meet your organization’s needs. Direct to cloud solutions provide always-on availability and let you manage backup and disaster recovery from a single, easy-to-navigate web-based UI.
- On-premises with hybrid cloud: This option is for those who need a cloud backup solution that can provide support for both physical hardware and cloud-based applications. This agile technology lets you create a cohesive data security, protection, and retention strategy across all of your environments with the cost savings that come with backing up to the cloud instead of to disk or tape.
- Office 365 cloud backup: 56 percent of companies use Office 365. If yours is one of them, we highly recommend backing up to the cloud right now. Microsoft’s shared responsibility model means they aren’t backing up your data for you, so if a worst-case scenario becomes your reality, you’re on your own when it comes to data recovery.
Security
Security is a top priority for every enterprise IT team, so a cloud backup solution that also provides cybersecurity capabilities sounds pretty magical. Look for a solution like Arcserve UDP Cloud Hybrid, which uses Sophos Intercept X to protect cloud workloads using a deep learning neural network for both known and unknown threats as well as many other of the latest cyberthreat detection and prevention technologies.
Also opt for streamlined backup management and high system visibility by selecting a cloud backup solution that provides a central console to schedule backups, monitor cloud usage, and manage failovers and failbacks.
Scalability
One of the biggest selling points of any cloud tool is the ease with which you can scale operations as needed. Cloud backup solutions let you configure and deploy in minutes.
Disaster Recovery
The year 2020 has been something else. If disaster recovery wasn’t on your radar before, it definitely should be now. Enterprise cloud backup solutions are the perfect vehicle for disaster recovery efforts because they not only store your backed-up data separate from your physical network, but they also come equipped with many features that will help you get the business back up and running quickly after a natural disaster, cyberattack, or other unplanned outage.
Arcserve offers a range of data loss prevention solutions that come equipped with a variety of disaster recovery capabilities, including:
- The ability to spin up instant VMs of physical and virtual systems on an appliance or in the cloud
- Push-button failover to preserve mission-critical data and applications
- The ability to maintain distributed infrastructure availability with RTOs under five minutes and RPOs under 15 minutes
- Image backups that ensure that if it’s on your server, it’s backed up to the cloud
- Agent-based and agent-less backups to meet the specific needs of your environment and infrastructure
Today’s business environment is uncertain enough. Why throw worrying about data backup and disaster recovery into the mix? Enterprise cloud backup solutions are the ideal way to ensure your data is stored securely and available quickly should you need to restore it after a security event or outage.
Get a free 15-day free trial of Arcserve Cloud Direct to experience the benefits and flexibility of a time-tested cloud backup solution that enables always-on business by delivering near-instant disaster recovery in the cloud.
