The cloud has changed the way that many businesses handle disaster recovery and business continuity planning. One of the biggest changes the cloud has brought to the business world is the ability for smaller organizations to use the type of data recovery systems that historically were only available to large organizations.

Now, any business’ disaster recovery plan can include complete data backups that are off-site and redundant. Prior to cloud backup systems, businesses were often limited to storing data backups on-site. If a fire broke out or servers were damaged in some other way, on-site data would be lost. Off-site backups frequently required manually making copies of data and/or moving storage media to a different location before cloud computing streamlined the backup process.

The cloud allows data to be saved automatically, and many businesses are working off of cloud-based systems at all times. Another major benefit of using the cloud for backups is that many other types of data storage have significant failure rates. Tapes, in particular, were used for decades as a method of storing backup data, but it has been found that they have about a 10 percent failure rate. Cloud computing offers redundant file storage, so unlike with tapes or even hard drives that could potentially fail, data saved to the cloud is almost guaranteed to always be available. Systems can be set in place to backup data automatically, and cloud storage allows you to keep multiple copies of records with different time-stamps.

Another Disaster Recovery solution the cloud provides is Cloud Replication, which allows for the restoration of data to a virtualized server. Utilizing an off-site data center’s cloud infrastructure, data can be made available instantly, then accessed remotely from anywhere in the world over multiple, redundant, high speed networks. This removes the bottleneck of local internet service providers bandwidth availability, and saves potentially hours of business critical time by bypassing the need to wait for your onsite systems to restore and be back in working order.

Should a disaster occur in which your infrastructure is no longer available or accessible to be restored, the need to purchase new hardware can be completely eliminated. Utilizing a Cloud Replication solution can have your business back online in minutes, not days. Employees can continue their work from home, remotely accessing images of their old workstations running live in the cloud, ensuring your business does not skip a beat.

The cloud is helping businesses recover their most critical systems and data faster, while also avoiding the expensive infrastructure costs of onsite or in-office data centers. Leveraging a cloud solution is by far one of the best, most cost effective ways to protect your company and ensure business continuity when disaster strikes. Whether it be an office fire, hardware failure, employee error, or malware infection, IT disasters are inevitable. That’s why it is critical that you have a plan in place. Don’t gamble with your company’s data, contact TurnKey Internet today and receive a free consultation of your company’s Disaster Recovery Plan.

Learn more at www.TurnKeyInternet.net/myplan