Modern information technology (IT) solutions provides enormous value to the small and mid-market businesses, but it also represents a tremendous point of weakness.
According to Ganesh Kuppuswamy, Director, Arcserve India & SAARC, when markets are global, employees work around the clock and business is effectively always on. Any accidental or minor interruption to application availability can quickly lead to loss of revenue, productivity, brand value, and regulatory problems. In extreme cases of downtime it can be the real threat to survival of a business.
The painful reality is that most organizations do not deal with it well. How this can be addressed effectively?
Backup and recovery has been the go-to technique for protecting IT systems for 30 years, but it was developed in a much simpler time; which may not be the right or desired approach in modern day scenario of complex IT architecture. The always-on business applications that businesses now rely on for day-to-day operations need a technology that guarantees continuous system availability and eliminates the threat of data loss, without relying on a backup window.
Need of High Availability (HA) for the Masses
HA is the dream solution to insure systems against downtime and data loss. But the technology has been viewed as too complex and expensive for small and mid-market businesses.
But today, the scenario somewhat very unique. The infrastructural advancements across low-cost and high-bandwidth networks transforming HA technology and making it available to more organizations at a much more modest price tag. The dramatic drop in HA infrastructure costs has put the business continuity plans of many organizations at an inflection point.
Modern high-availability (HA) technology continuously streams application and data changes to a remote location. When disaster strikes, be it an earthquake, a power outage, or a bungled software install, failover to an up-to-date copy of your system is automatic and instant. HA eliminates downtime and eliminates data loss.
Simplifying Data Protection Future
HA technology is no longer the complex, esoteric approach to business continuity that it once was. The technology has been tried and tested and is widely accepted as a standard disaster avoidance tool. It is simple, repeatable, measureable, and automated. Technologies such as Continuous Data Protection, replication and automated failover and failback are critical.
The maturing of HA products has brought the price within reach of small and mid-market companies. This, combined with lowered infrastructure costs, broadband, server virtualization, multiple service providers and dramatically improved usability are making HA a very real business continuity alternative for organizations of all sizes.
Downtime and data loss are a fact of life for businesses that rely on IT. Offsetting this risk with the right technology must be a consideration at the earliest stages of the software development and product deployment lifecycles. Understanding the protection level demanded by each application lets businesses to allocate appropriate resources.
