Many of the most exciting and popular new trends in corporate computing have had direct implications to disaster recovery and business continuity, including cloud hosting and colocation. From boosting the elasticity of operations through flexible, agile and seamless solutions to creating stronger contingencies at a lower cost, leaders have a wider range of options to reduce the risk of disruption and loss than ever before. 

At the same time, disaster situations still remain problematic for a wealth of organizations, despite the fact that there are so few excuses for not having a tight backup and recovery plan in place. These matters are still somewhat challenging, but having informed and intelligent plans in place that are supported by effective, reliable technologies can quickly reduce a firm's risk level and simultaneously improve the ebb and flow of general operations in the process. 

Get Smart

CIO Magazine recently listed some of the main considerations business leaders should be keeping in mind when deciding upon how they will handle DR and continuity for their firms, asserting that the decision between in-house and outsourced options is critical. When companies approach these matters flippantly, they might think that internal management of DR is achievable despite not having the resources or expertise to get the programs right.

According to the news provider, some signs that a firm is struggling to strike the right chords in these endeavors include a lack of understanding when it comes to the direct and indirect impact outages will have on an application-by-application basis. Additionally, CIO Magazine noted that cost analysis to discover whether or not the firm can afford to manage DR and continuity entirely in-house should help leaders make the right decisions in the provisioning stages. 

To that end, the source asserted that managers will need to be confident in their ability to recover from all different forms of disaster. After all, the cost of downtime can reach the millions of dollars within just a week of disruptions, which is a price tag many organizations would not be able to handle in stride. The cost of investing in effective controls and services will almost always be lower, while the positive impacts to general operations add further incentive to do so. 

Solutions available
Colocation is one of the more powerful and affordable solutions that can boost a company's resilience to outages, disruption and losses, as it acts as a strong contingency for when core systems go down. Again, these services are inherently well-suited to disaster recovery and continuity, but are far from being one-dimensional in the sense of only helping the adopting organization accomplish one goal. 

Rather, firms will often be able to improve the fluidity of user experiences on a daily basis, enabling mobility and other strategies that enhance engagement in the process. In the coming years, colocation will likely play a more central role in the fight to boost operational efficiency, power and reliability, and business leaders who have not yet considered this investment should do so soon.