Disaster Recovery as a Service helps customers buck the trend of untested DR plans

Phoenix has seen that customers using Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) such as Cloud Backup & Recovery, Virtual Disaster Recovery or Data Replication services, all undertook rehearsals of their plans last year. This highlights that customers find it easier to test with DRaaS in place than customers who have traditional business continuity (BC) services, where Phoenix has seen only 40% of its customers testing, in-line with the current industry standard.

Phoenix has found that DRaaS makes it much easier for customers to test because the data is with the same provider and the logistical issues usually found around testing, such as tape transportation and getting IT staff to the recovery centre, are removed. Furthermore, as it’s DR as a Service, the service provider can initiate the recovery so customers are able to remotely access the recovered infrastructure to ensure that everything they needed to recover, has been recovered. The ‘live’ service element of DRaaS ensures a regular flow of communication which in turn increases awareness of testing.

As part of Business Continuity awareness Week (BCAW), Phoenix is offering businesses across the country the opportunity to visit its regional BC centres. Phoenix hopes to create greater awareness among businesses of the importance of reviewing their DR and BC plans. Recent figures published by the company show that just 45% of Phoenix customers in total, tested last year with only 12% testing more than once.

With environmental and hardware failures the most common reasons why customers put Phoenix on standby to use its DR services, the company is urging organisations to test their DR plans at least once a year to protect themselves against unforeseen but commonplace disruptions.

Mike Osborne, Head of Business Continuity at Phoenix commented:
“We’ve found that customers with DRaaS in place find testing less disruptive to their day-to-day business operations and they are testing at least once last year. Some of our DRaaS solutions can be tested remotely and customers are much more engaged with delivering their expected recovery time and point objectives.”

“We are using BCAW as an opportunity to invite anyone keen to learn about DRaaS, to visit our centres where recovery engineers will be available to tour the facilities and talk about anything from BC planning, recovering data in the cloud and workarea recovery. The reasons our customers need to recover their systems and data are not unusual, dramatic events, but everyday issues – don’t wait until you have a disaster to find out that your DR plan is not up-to-date.”

Phoenix is opening its doors to all of its regional business continuity centres, spread across the country, over the course of BCAW, the annual global educational event run by the Business Continuity Institute, which runs from 16th-20th March.