Profiting from preparedness

The scouts could teach us a thing or two about the importance of recovery and preparedness. Of the nearly two million Scout merit badges earned last year, first aid and emergency preparedness ranked among the highest. Business, on the other hand, isn’t quite so prepared.

It’s estimated that 75 per cent of small businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan, according to insurance company, Nationwide. Of even greater concern is that approximately 90 per cent of businesses that lose data are forced to close within two years, according to the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA).

As well as being unprepared for future, many organisations are struggling with the management of data backup. A recent survey that we commissioned discovered that nearly 50 per cent of IT decision makers are struggling with data growth and believe it is only going to get worse. 51 per cent are not confident that their IT infrastructures can perform instant data recovery in the event of a failure.

It’s clear there is a problem and a demand for disaster preparedness and recovery. For MSPs and VARs there is a huge opportunity to profit from helping prepare for data and system outages. As many as three quarters of your customers don’t have a disaster recovery plan, so now is the time to proactively discuss disaster recovery strategies.

Organisations used to back up files to protect against loss or damage. As data volumes grew, they bought more storage and servers to manage the problem. That approach becomes a volume and commodity play, but it doesn’t add value, create lasting relationships, or present meaningful profit opportunities.

The Channel opportunity is to advise and help customers understand the different backup and recovery solutions and services available, and to create Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) offerings comprising fully integrated on-premise, off-premise, and cloud solutions. When customers see a service from a disaster recovery standpoint they immediately see the value.

DRaaS means a more strategic offering – namely, business continuity. For customers, the value of business continuity is much higher as it gives the assurance of being able to achieve operational recovery in the event of disaster. Backup is only a part of a complete disaster recovery solution. DRaaS means taking care of all your customers’ disaster recovery needs. It means you’re able to scale as they scale.

As natural disasters and cyber-attacks become increasingly common, discussion about preparedness, disaster recovery and business continuity has never been more relevant. The DRaaS market is expected to grow from $2.19 billion (£1.56 billion) this year to $12.54 billion (£8.96 billion) by 2022—a CAGR of 41.8 per cent (according to MarketsandMarkets). Clearly there is opportunity for everyone to profit from preparedness.