How to Easily Test Disaster Recovery
Webinar Key Takeaways
01 Top IT Trends Include Cloud & Cybersecurity
Key Takeaways
Meet the Speakers
02 5 Data Threat Trends That Present Significant Risks
03 Why DR Testing is Critical and Why it Often Doesn’t Go Well
04 How to Make DR a Success
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05 Reasons to Partner With iland For Disaster Recovery
Trends, Gaps, and Solutions for Your Customers
Top IT trends include cloud & cybersecurity
The environment for disaster recovery (DR) is grounded by understanding the top IT trends. A recent study from CompTIA identified 10 top trends:
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“A critical thing that CEOs of small and mid-sized businesses are saying is, ‘Outsource what is not essential or core to your business; outsource to MSPs who are experts in this.’ I think that’s going to be a bigger and bigger trend in 2022 and 2023."
- Theresa Caragol, Channel Futures
A people crisis, budget needs, data challenges
There is no normal. Everything is still changing and evolving.
1)
Cloud is king. Cloud is now the predominant way that MSPs are going to market. Cloud is only going to get bigger and deeper because vendors are developing great cloud service offerings.
2)
Channel firms are responding to customer challenges. Customers have the power and channel firms are responding to them.
3)
Channel dynamics are becoming more balanced. The power equation is shifting and it’s becoming an ecosystem, not just a channel.
4)
Emerging technologies find their place inside business solutions. Today, it’s not about tech for tech’s sake; it’s all about business outcomes, ROI, and value.
5)
Zero trust shapes cybersecurity initiatives. There is a tremendous focus on cybersecurity.
6)
Managed service providers build deeper cybersecurity expertise. Some MSPs are partnering with MSSPs, while others are building capabilities with big security vendors.
7)
Tech industry is preparing for regulation. Regulation of tech is coming.
8)
Business conversations drive business skills for tech pros. There is a big focus among tech people to gain business skills.
9)
Companies set public goals for diversity. Diversity and inclusion are now high on everyone’s agenda and are becoming an area of focus.
10)
These trends are occurring among three other macro trends:
A people crisis. There is great resignation, people switching careers, and a labor shortage. This is causing many companies to consider partnering and outsourcing.
Budget considerations. Among MSPs, 29% are hiring more staff and 28% are investing in more innovation.
Data is a top priority. Essential areas within data include database administration, data management, data visualization, predictive analytics, and blockchain.
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Top IT Trends of 2021
Source: CompTIA
5 data threat trends that present significant risks
5 data threat trends that present significant risks to customers—and that all MSPs should speak with their customers about—are:
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Among the key risks to data are natural disasters
Labor issues. Multiple reports have found that almost half of operators say they are unable to find enough staff. Operators also report labor issues related to employee morale.
Supply chain issues. As if labor issues alone weren’t enough, operators are struggling with supply chain issues, which have led to shortages of key items, such as flour, cheese, and proteins, as well as shortages and unavailability of to-go packaging.
Tim & Kelly Paslowski, owners of two Chicken Salad Chick locations in Savannah, Georgia
“There has been a tenfold increase in natural disasters over the past 50 years. It is something that organizations need to plan for.”
- Jack Bailey, iland
Accidental deletion. Almost 40% of organizations have suffered a data loss incident due to accidental deletion.
Internal threats. There are malicious insiders, departing employees, and good employees who have had their credentials stolen. Privilege misuse is the second most prevalent cause of cybersecurity incidents today.
Retention gaps. A problem can arise if there is not adequate data retention which provides the ability to rewind back in time and recover data. In many instances, the latest copy of data is not necessarily the best copy.
External threats. Ransomware has grown more than 400% in the past year as “ransomware as a service” has emerged as a real thing. There are incredible stats about the amount being paid to ransomware hackers.
Natural disasters. These are not isolated events; they are increasingly common and need to be planned for.
Data Threat Trends and Risks
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Why DR testing is critical and why it often doesn’t go well
4 key reasons why testing doesn’t go well
Test was completely successful; could recover with users barely noticing
Test was moderately successful; should be able to recover within 1 day
Encountered some difficulty resolving issues, should recover within 1 week
Encountered issues that would result in sustained downtime
Finite personnel and planning. Many organizations (46%) don’t have a DR or business continuity plan. Along with not having plans, organizations lack clarity around who is doing what, which is compounded by a staff shortage.
Reasons testing doesn’t go well are:
Limited validation. About 65% of organizations don’t test their DR plan frequently enough. Without testing and validating, organizations have no confidence that their plans will work.
“When organizations don’t test, they don’t discover the things that are missing, and that’s a common thing.”
Capacity challenges. Currently, 74% of organizations rely on a second site as a backup for their disaster recovery. But as organizations rapidly grow, it is difficult to maintain a dedicated second site just for backup purposes. Doing so can require significant time, resources, and money.
Lengthy recovery/failback. Outsourcing to a service provider is a good approach, but not any service provider will do. Recovery times can be delayed when a service provider has networking problems, VM configuration problems, or compatibility problems.
Thinking of your most recent test/drill, which of the following statements most closely resembles the outcome?
Our disaster recovery plan may be inadequate
Other
0%
12.5%
50%
25%
A Gartner survey found that of companies with a trusted disaster recovery plan were able to survive ransomware attacks and are likely prepared for any type of disaster. However, testing shows that most organizations don’t have a trusted disaster recovery plan.
96%
How to make DR a success
Organizations are realizing that disaster recovery is not a luxury anymore; it is a necessity. Because disaster recovery is so important, it is an area where MSPs can help clients. Traditional disaster recovery meant having a second DR site (shown below) to serve as the backup for the organization’s production site. But this traditional DR recovery approach results in costly unused hardware, additional management overhead, and performance limitations. The additional site has to be patched and maintained.
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Compared to traditional DR, the cloud is a great fit. The cloud provides unlimited capacity on-demand, as needed. A cloud DR solution is maintained by an expert third party, like iland, and users are only charged when they use services.
Problems with traditional DR and why cloud makes all the difference
“I think we can agree that the traditional disaster recovery is something that is really challenging to justify from a financial and from a technical perspective.”
Reasons to partner with iland for disaster recovery
Working with iland for disaster recovery has multiple benefits. Customers receive backup production hosting with simplified pricing. Storage is provided at a monthly cost, and then the CPU, RAM, networking, and support are paid for based on hourly consumption during a test or failover. iland is powered using the same technology as many other cloud providers but uses technology that is compatible with most SMBs and mid-market companies. iland’s platform is built for MSPs and can also be used by MSPs to solve other customer problems. Everything is managed by a unified layer.
5
Reduce risk, save money, drive revenue
“Whether it's backup, disaster recovery, production hosting, object storage, services, security, all of that is managed from a single pane of glass.”
iland also offers a fully managed recovery option–called Autopilot–for companies that don’t have these capabilities with their onsite staff. MSPs can leverage Autopilot as well, or offer their own fully managed recovery services to their customers.
Reduced risk: though limited data loss, complete protection, the ability to recover quickly, and increased confidence.
Savings: by eliminating costs and paying only for what is used.
Revenue growth for users and MSPs: companies can focus on what they do best (which is not DR) and can drive value. MSPs can provide an important new offering.
The ultimate benefits are:
Jack Bailey
Director of Enablement iland
Jack has more than 15 years of experience in the IT world, with a career that has focused on virtualization and business resiliency. His skill set includes a blend of frontline and leadership positions in technical administration, technical sales, product, and enablement roles at companies such as Zerto and Rubrik. Currently, Jack helps ensure iland partners and iland internal sales teams can provide accurate and meaningful engagement with our shared customers and prospects.
Theresa Caragol
Contributing Editor Channel Futures
Theresa is the founder and CEO of AchieveUnite Inc., a strategic advisory firm that provides business acceleration services to global enterprises including partner and channel development, go-to-market planning, M&A channel integration, and industry and channel training programs including a virtual peer-group business and channel leadership training program called ACE. She has more than 20 years of experience in building and managing multi-million-dollar indirect channel teams and strategic alliance businesses and programs from inception to sales success. Before founding AchieveUnite, Theresa held senior executive roles at Extreme Networks, Ciena and Nortel.
Donny Jackson
Editor IWCE’s Urgent Communications Moderator
Opening Remarks delivered by:
Donny Jackson is editor of IWCE's Urgent Communications, generating content about the critical-communications arena for almost two decades and contributing to the annual IWCE conference program. Jackson won the 2013 Jesse H. Neal Award in the "Best Subject-Related Series" category for public-safety broadband coverage associated with the establishment of FirstNet.
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Provide customers peace of mind with a simple yet comprehensive testing strategy. Are your customers ready if disaster strikes? It’s not just about having a disaster recovery solution and plan in place. Can your customers confidently say that their businesses will continue if mother nature or human nature comes calling? The only way to know is to put DR to the test.
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