FEATURE: BUSINESS CONTINUITY
FEATURE: BUSINESS CONTINUITY
Having a pay-per-use model that sits
offsite is more cost-effective and
easier to manage for businesses.
They’re after ease of use regarding
backup, disaster recovery and the
larger business continuity and
availability practice.
and as such, companies need to
consider the 3-2-1 rule for proper data
availability. The 3-2-1 rule states that
there should be three different copies
of data on two different types of media,
one of which is off-site.
Business continuity
plans should no
longer be optional
Regional power outages, especially
extended outages that impact
telecommunications infrastructure,
is a disaster threat specific to
developing countries.
One of the most significant recent
threats is ransomware that aims to elicit
funds from companies in exchange for
access to their data.
Veeam’s Regional Manager for Africa, Claude Shuck, talks to
Intelligent CIO about the importance of a business continuity
plan for African organisations.
T documentation; capacity planning
and ‘what if’ modelling; and backup
and virtual infrastructure monitoring
and reporting.
If done correctly, a business continuity
plan should give decision-makers the
peace of mind that the company can
failover to a different site in
the event of a crisis or disaster. A
business continuity plan should
prioritise offsite replication with
traffic optimisation and advanced
capabilities; easier disaster recovery
orchestration and recovery testing;
infrastructure assessment and There will always be a balancing act
performed in the data centre with
regards to levels of availability and
the associated costs. The CIO today
needs to have discussions with the
business leaders of the organisation
to ensure that the services delivered
in the data centre meet the needs
and expectations of the stakeholders.
Putting this perspective on the
business leaders will allow technology
management to obtain the
funding needed.
he ability to maintain operations
in the event of natural disasters,
cyberattacks and extreme
weather conditions is a crucial part
of securing business stability and
reputation as well as data and security.
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What’s at risk?
Data has become the currency of
the always-on economy. Not having
an effective business continuity plan
in place to safeguard it from loss,
theft, or compromise, could see an
organisation suffer significant financial
and reputational damage.
The 2017 Veeam Availability Report
reveals the true impact of downtime on
businesses. While downtime costs vary,
the data shows that the average annual
cost of downtime for each organisation
surveyed in the study amounts to R270-
million (companies surveyed had an
average size of 7,500 employees).
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Downtime and data loss are also causing
enterprises to face public scrutiny, in
ways that cannot be measured by a
balance sheet. This year’s study shows
that almost half of enterprises see a
loss of customer confidence and 40%
experienced damage to brand integrity,
which affect both brand reputation and
customer retention. Looking at internal
implications, a third of respondents see
diminished employee confidence and
28% have experienced a diversion of
project resources to ‘clean up’ the mess.
The spate of global malware
attacks should be the impetus every
organisation needs to review its business
continuity strategy and ensure it remains
always-on in the event of a crisis,
irrespective of its origin. Businesses must
assume it is a case of when an attack will
happen, not if.
Budget cuts will become more prevalent
among businesses operating in African
countries entering a recession or those
experiencing slow economic growth.
Companies will start putting cost
cutting measures in place, however this
doesn’t mean the responsibility of a
business continuity plan and testing
should go away.
Investing in solutions
Regional threats
Hardware failure remains one of the
biggest disaster threats for businesses
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At Veeam, we see a huge focus on
cloud and service provider technologies.
They have input in almost every new
product feature, and our business lines
in this regard are among our strongest
growth areas.
Unsurprisingly, cloud and its various
consumption models are changing
the way businesses approach data
protection. Investments in Backup as a
Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as
a Service (DRaaS) are expected to rise
similarly as organisations combine them
with cloud.
Veeam Cloud Connect makes it easy for
Veeam customers to extend their backup
infrastructure to the cloud and makes it
easy for service providers to offer hosted
backup repositories or complete backup
services with Veeam.
In addition, Veeam has introduced
a consumption-based model where
customers can now purchase services
from Veeam as they need on a monthly
to quarterly basis. This model heralds a
shift to purchasing availability on a ‘pay-
per-play’ basis that is determined by
usage. Having a pay-per-use model that
sits offsite is more cost-effective and
easier to manage for businesses. They’re
after ease of use regarding backup,
disaster recovery and the larger business
continuity and availability practice.
Veeam’s solutions are effectively in
use by National Disaster Management
Centre. The NDMC coordinates disaster
preparedness programmes and relief
services in South Africa. It assesses every
possible risk throughout the country
and prepares a corresponding plan for
disaster recovery and its IT staff has a
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