2011 Disaster Recovery Trends

In 2010, I made a presentation to a global meeting of Bull customers on DR Trends in Phoenix Arizona.  In that presentation, I discussed 2010 trends in the IT recovery environment that have not significantly changed in 2011.   IT recovery is beginning to pick up and the industry is moving far away from the old days of tape recovery.  So, trends we see in 2011:

1. Data Center Outsourcing / Colocation – We continue to see an increase in this arena.  Many data centers are running out of cooling, space or power and are looking for a hardened data center to replace it.  For many clients, this is a great alternative that provides then with a higher level of redundancy and reliability than they have today mitigating the greatest risk for data centers, a localized failure.  Many organizations do not want to build their own data centers and have to deal with the ongoing costs and maintenance of a highly redundant facility.
2. Cloud for Disaster Recovery – This continues to be a discussion for many of our clients.  In my opinion, the cloud lends itself  well  for on-demand recovery testing, data backup, etc.  There are concerns over security of the cloud but I believe over time it will be a component of any good disaster recovery program.
3. Virtualization and Automation of Recovery – One of the single greatest improvements realized by our industry.  This continues to grow in our client data centers and has facilitated the ability to reduce complexity, lessen need for lengthy recovery plans, shorten recovery times dramatically and, most importantly, permit repeated, successful recoveries.
4. Data Replication – This technology continues to increase in all of our clients.   MHA sees Recovery Point Objectives continue to lessen as end users tolerance for data loss diminishes across the corporate world.  The challenge for most IT organizations is ensuring their replication strategy meets or exceeds the needs of the business.  Do not over implement this strategy; have a clear and agreed upon understanding as to the business needs of the organization and its tolerance for data loss.

With all of this in place, you will need a highly resilient and capable data network.  If your network is not resilient, adaptable and capable of supporting your organization in a disruption, then you will suffer the consequences.  So make sure your network is ready for all of these great technologies.  The lack of a best of class network has been the biggest limiting factor to many of our client’s recovery programs.

About MHA: MHA Consulting, with its decade-long track record, is a proven leader in business continuity planning, disaster recovery planning, IT best practices and data center moves and relocations. Every day, MHA helps protect trillions of dollars of global-market assets and top companies around the world rely on MHA services for the continuity of their business. For more information on MHA, contact Michael Herrera at herrera at mha-it dot com or visit www.mha-it.com.