Japanese earthquake shines light on cloud-based disaster recovery

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Despite the recent earthquake that devastated much of Japan and the surrounding region last week, many businesses are feeling optimistic about their disaster recovery efforts, thanks to cloud computing, the E-Commerce Times reports.

According to the report, many of the country's cloud computing data centers, including those run by Amazon and Salesforce.com, remain intact and functional. And while outlook is cautious, businesses are reportedly confident in their ability to recover.

Randy Abrams, technical education director for security software manufacturer ESET, told the news provider that many prepared IT professionals have deployed disaster recovery plans that involved the cloud. Doing so ensures a business' vital data is located in a different area world, where it is safe from the same natural disasters that affect the company's physical location.

"Strategies such as on-site backup and distributed cloud backup provide redundancy," Abrams said. "A company that is not prepared to deal with the disruption that a natural disaster can cause is not prepared to deal with many other disruptions, regardless of the cause."

While cloud adoption for disaster recovery plans is growing, many businesses do not take such steps until it is too late. According to a recent Carbonite report, 86 percent of small- and medium-businesses still rely on physical storage devices.