In the previous installment of our Disaster Recovery (DR) Plan series we established and outlined the steps which should be followed when creating a robust DR Plan. In our final chapter we explore beyond disaster recovery and the steps you can take to ensure that your organisation has a true Business Continuity plan in place.  

To commence, a quick refresher on the subtle yet key distinctions between a DR plan and a true Business Continuity plan: 

• A DR plan will cover how best to restore business processes within a certain time frame – the recovery time objective (RTO) – when disaster strikes. 
• A true Business Continuity plan ensures that essential business functions can continue to operate as normal with an absolute minimal downtime in the event of a disruption.  

A simple way to help conceptualize business continuity is to think of it as the sum of all individual efforts; data backup, disaster recovery planning and organizational readiness. In essence, while every business continuity plan will by its nature incorporate Disaster Recovery, not every DR Plan will necessarily consider Business Continuity. A good business continuity plan will allow your organisation to get back to doing what it does best – taking care of your customers – as quickly and as seamlessly as possible; simultaneously reducing the risk of lost revenue from downtime as well as the negative ramifications of reputational damage. 

With the vast spectrum of challenges and vulnerabilities that organisations in the modern digital business environment must contend with, the logical conclusion is to incorporate powerful ICT tools and services into the solution. As an indigenous ICT leader with 40 years of business experience in the space, Datapac continuously reviews the ever-evolving market for best-in-class solutions to meet the needs of our customers. To that end we recommend and have partnered with global continuity leader Datto and leverage their technology to power our continuity services and solutions. As a long-standing partner, we in Datapac have witnessed a steady and consistent growth and evolution in Datto’s suite of product offerings, which has developed far beyond mere data backup to providing fully integrated Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) solution that protects business data wherever it may live. 

Datto SIRIS

Datto’s flagship SIRIS platform represents the pinnacle of BCDR technology for on-premises server and storage solutions. SIRIS makes adhering to the 3-2-1 backup principle as easy as 1-2-3. Automated, verified backups are stored locally on the Datto SIRIS appliance as well as remotely in the secure Datto Cloud. By working with Datapac, sophisticated levels of control can be leveraged over your Datto SIRIS platform to ensure that backup intervals are as granular as needed, ensuring the best available RTO and RPO rates. Datto SIRIS allows for instant server virtualization, which ensures that business continues as usual with absolute minimal disruption while the disaster is being averted.  

For a detailed explanation of the key features of Datto SIRIS as well as a demo of the platform’s file recovery and server virtualization functionality, click here to request a recording of our recent webinar. 

Datto Continuity for Azure

A more recent addition to Datto’s BCDR portfolio comes in the form of Datto Continuity for Azure, which released late last year. As a platinum level partner, Datapac were one of the few selected to participate in the alpha and beta testing phases for this solution. 

Datto Continuity for Azure ensures that workloads hosted in Microsoft Azure are protected and easily recoverable. Get truly cloud-native business continuity for your business with multi-cloud protection and hourly replication to the unassailable Datto Cloud. Under Microsoft’s shared responsibility model, customers are responsible for keeping their data secure, protected and up-to-date. Workloads running in Azure are not automatically backed up and there is an onus of responsibility on every organisation to ensure that they have a failsafe third party solution in place for when they need it. 

If you would like to learn more about how Datapac’s continuity services and solutions enhanced by the Datto BCDR suite can secure the continuity of your business, please leave your details below for a no-obligations call back from a member of our cybersecurity team. 

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