The Business Take On Cloud-Based Resiliency Services

This is a fretful time for those who have responsibility for business continuity. Security threats are multiplying while the costs of downtime and security incidents are on the rise. US Federal Network Breaches climbed from 10,481 in 2009 to 25,566 in 2013. Vulnerabilities are increasing as well, with operating system and application vulnerabilities doubling from 2011 to 2014. At the same time, the data reveals that it is getting easier for hackers to exploit these vulnerabilities. Accenture reports that 63% of firms are under significant daily attack.[1]  Meanwhile, the average cost of data center down time rose from $5,600 a minute in 2010 to $7,900 in 2013. The annual worldwide cost of data loss and downtime was estimated to be a remarkable $1.7 trillion.[2]

It’s more than just the million-dollar-a-pop cost of an outage. The broader business impact can be severe. Worst case, 90% of companies without a disaster recovery plan go under after a major outage.[3] That statistic should frighten any business manager. Short of actual bankruptcy, though, there can still be a number of serious consequences for a business that lacks a plan for an outage.  These include loss of productivity, which can also affect employee morale. Revenue can take a hit.  Customer and partner loyalty may wane if systems are unreliable. Business impacts can also include serious reputation damage and market valuation consequences, depending on the nature of the incident. In many cases, senior executives face personal career repercussions or even personal legal liability from serious incidents.

The emerging field of “Cloud-Based Resiliency Services” shows great promise in mitigating the latest crop of potential catastrophes. The word resiliency means being able to return to an original form or position after being bent or knocked out of place. It also connotes the ability to recover fully from an illness.  Business resiliency is about enabling a business to recover from serious disruptions to its IT capabilities.

Cloud-based resiliency services are a portfolio of security and recovery solutions, technological platforms and professional services that help the enterprise maintain resiliency in the face of disruptive threats. The cloud-based resiliency services portfolio includes guided implementations for cloud backup-as-a-service (BaaS), high availability, managed security services, system failover, disaster recovery as-a-service (DRaaS), and so forth.

CenturyLink Cloud has extensive experience with cloud-based resiliency services. The CenturyLink approach leverages the company’s cloud platform to enable streamlined implementation, management and modification of the services. This reduces the risk of fragmentation that can occur when companies try to create and manage their own cloud-based resiliency with a bundle of independent services.

Without unified management, which CenturyLink’s platform provides, there can be inefficiencies and resiliency gaps that expose the enterprise to costly risks and negate the impact of the whole process.

CenturyLink Cloud is able to offer resiliency based on a hybrid cloud model. A single platform manages deployments of resiliency services that span multiple technologies on-premises, on private cloud and multi-tenant public cloud infrastructure. The result is more efficient use of redundant infrastructure and increased agility in resiliency service design.

By their nature, cloud-based resiliency services will vary from one enterprise to the next. Risk assessment and professional services steer the design and implementation processes. The specific way these components are implemented will depend on each enterprise’s unique requirements. However, the end result will be the same if the cloud-based resiliency services are executed properly: unifying DR, backup and security will move the enterprise close to cost-effective continuous availability of key systems.

CenturyLink’s professional services round out the cloud-based resiliency services offering. CenturyLink consultants can help with business impact analysis (BIA), disaster recovery readiness, disaster protection design and implementation, and testing services.

As experienced business continuity managers know, the recovery plan is often as important as the specific recovery measures and technologies that are in place. CenturyLink has the ability to bring together planning, technologies such as SafeHaven and the CenturyLink Cloud platform with recovery readiness and testing to deliver a complete resiliency capability.

Thinking about the business impact of security incidents and outages offers a way to evaluate the financial pros and cons of adopting cloud-based resiliency services. Each individual enterprise will find its own distinct economic formula for making the decision to move in that direction or not. However, the increasing severity and cost of incidents should encourage business leaders to consider cloud-based resiliency services. These services are more cost-effective to implement and manage than comparable, piecemeal on-premises disaster recovery, backup and security solutions. They also come together synergistically to offer a higher level of resiliency – closing gaps in business continuity that expose businesses to potentially massive costs.

The business case for cloud-based resiliency services is strong.  Managers who are concerned about resiliency are well-advised to research their applicability in their particular organizations. To evaluate your options related to business resiliency take our disaster recovery quiz.

[2] EMC Global Data Protection Index: http://www.cioinsight.com/it-management/slideshows/the-trillion-dollar-cost-of-downtime-and-data-loss.html#sthash.LCQ8LPFX.dpuf

[3] Emerson Network Power / Ponemon Institute: http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/About/NewsRoom/NewsReleases/Pages/Emerson-Ponemon-Cost-Unplanned-Data-Center-Outages.aspx