We cannot think business without technology today. However, the more you depend on the technology, there is more chance of disruption in business continuity if there is any technological disruption. Not to mention, these disruptions often have direct and cascading effects on revenue and markets. But if organizations shift the services to the cloud service, it will make the system more agile.

Key challenges with business continuity with technological disruption

• In case of business disruptions, remote workers get worse affected as they become unable to access critical data. A secured cloud infrastructure minimizes this disruption.
• In a conventional system, it isn’t easy to ramp down usage-based services. As a result, it isn’t easy to save costs.
• It is difficult to ensure disaster recovery (DR) readiness which often entails inventory discovery of current systems. In this case, forced DR drills and risk assessments to need agility.

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Key benefits of leveraging Cloud for business continuity planning (BCP) initiatives

• Employee Productivity: Maintain the employee productivity levels the same as pre-disaster level.
• Reduced Costs: Move from the capital expenditure “CAPEX” model to a “pay-as-you-go” model.
• Deployment: A streamlined process for proof of concept to production and procurement reduces implementation time.
• Automation: Easy automation of processes and repetitive tasks helps minimize human intervention and errors.
• Security: Security responsibilities are aligned with the Cloud vendors. This helps businesses augment their security efforts.
• Work-from-Home: Cloud often turns out a better infrastructure choice, considering that most organizations are moving towards a work-from-home/remote working culture
• Operational resiliency: Cloud-based business continuity makes operational resiliency easier, economical, and faster. Additionally, with cloud, organizations can easily handle downtime. Hence, it minimizes the effect on revenue and production.

Why an Organization needs Cloud-based Business Continuity?

Availability – No matter whether your business is located in remote areas, your business can avail of a cloud-based business continuity solution. Every cloud vendor is now offering an array of services, and your IT team can pick and choose the services the best of the breed for their business needs.

Cost-effective – Cloud-based business continuity solutions are cost-effective and affordable, even for small businesses. As a business, you can customize your solution by subscribing only to the services you need. Also, based on the requirement like business expansion, such subscriptions can be added or removed.

Easy backups –Cloud-based business continuity makes it happen to back up data in real-time or at scheduled intervals. Also, this backup process can be automated accordingly.

Easy to restore from the cloud – Disaster recovery with the cloud is much more straightforward. You can easily restore the functions with the cloud. Cloud-based business continuity is 99% more reliable than that of more conventional backup options such as tapes, disks, or flash drives, where the probability of data corruption is high.

Can be accessed from anywhere – One of the biggest advantages of using the cloud for Business Continuity is that it can be accessed from anywhere in the event of a disaster. All that is needed is an internet-connected device. Of course, security being a prime consideration, proper authentication procedures must be followed. If the production center is out of action, then authorized staff can work from home, hotels, convention centers, etc. This wide accessibility gives IT Staff more breathing space to normalize functions and to ensure business continuity.

How to choose the Right Cloud-based Business Continuity Plan

• Document all processes, activities, and tasks for review, reference, and training
• Organization’s business and technical teams should reach a consensus on RPO and RTO values for the BCDR solution
• Businesses need to categorize all data, systems, and applications sequentially based on priority
• Compare and contrast the cost vs. benefit for all available cloud-based BCDR solutions
• Test the prospective cloud solution in as many BCDR scenarios as possible before making the purchase

How to Implement a Cloud-based Business Continuity Plan

• Design a cloud solution that manages data hierarchically – Start with data storage, followed by backup and restore, and finally leveraging disaster recovery during a crisis
• Automate as much as possible, leaving very little margin for manual error
• Contract the services of an experienced cloud-based business continuity vendor and customize the solution to your specific needs

What business continuity aspects should be considered when engaging in cloud computing?

The business continuity solution should be focused on the below points –

• It must ensure the continuous availability of the business services.
• If problems occur, the customers must be least affected.
• The solution must be enforced for the long term.

Planned Exit strategy and vendor lock-in: These two are vital points that should be taken care when business continuity is agreed upon with any cloud service provider. Exit provisions need to be negotiated. The provider must agree to move the service back in-house or to transfer it to an alternative provider to ensure business continuity. Along with that data, portability must be achieved in this process. Also, vendor lock-in should be taken care of. A long initial contract term may lead to lock-in, which could make it harder to exit the cloud service at short notice if necessary. With a clear exit strategy, the customer can avoid vendor lock-in.

Multi-cloud: Not just CSP but also cloud customers can combine cloud services from different CSP’s, which in combination may increase the business continuity complexity. A cloud customer may, for example, make use of a provider’s service to monitor and analyze his systems but may use another provider’s service to manage its HR information.

Internet disruption: It is not only the provider that has the risk of discontinuity but also can happen at the customer side too. If the customer’s own internet connection fails or is disrupted, even if the providers’ networks are operational, business continuity can also be disrupted.

Backup mechanisms: It is important when considering moving to the cloud that customers first check whether the CSP makes backups regularly, and if so, how these backups are available, how often they’re updated, whether there is a copy on another medium (physically) or just a duplicate of the data on the same disk and in what format the data is stored. Many CSPs offer backup as a separate service: if the customer is willing to pay extra, the CSP will make backups and assume liability for backups’ integrity and data loss.