Microsoft Azure is part of the 3 main components of the cloud computing XaaS family consisting of IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). Azure is both IaaS and PaaS, and like all cloud computing services their overall business benefits are to help any organization "achieve their desired business outcomes". Let's take a quick look at one of the business benefits of Azure - Disaster Recovery.
DISASTER RECOVERY
Before implementing Azure, you put significant thought and research into the advantages of Azure for your Disaster Recovery requirements. You may have found the following advantages:
- A truly cost-effective solution
- It's very easy to deploy and manage
- World-class data resilience
- Workload protection
- A true hybrid solution
Disaster Recovery Post Implementation
Now that Azure is implemented, you have the responsibility of ensuring that you have a rock-solid Disaster Recovery plan in place and the ability to manage that plan to perfection. Here are a few scenarios you must ensure your staff is trained and prepared for:
Ensure Data Management, Security, and Protection Work in Unison
Achieving your desired business goals is the essence of cloud computing. Matching those business goals for continuity and compliance throughout the life cycle of your mission critical apps is no exception. Azure will dramatically help secure and protect your data with industry leading technology offered by encryption features.
Ensure Mission Critical Apps are Up and Running During Critical Times
A major outage or disaster can be catastrophic to your business. Azure's disaster recovery solution protects and supports an industry leading wide range of enterprise applications compared to any other disaster recovery providers. Azure will fail over your apps—and your entire data center—with automated recovery plans in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months.
Perform Tests Any Time for Complete Confidence
Having an experienced and highly trained staff to be able test your business continuity plans is paramount. This also includes running dev-test copies of production workloads in Azure without impacting users. In addition, having the ability to test new versions of applications with live data, and then put the new versions into production in your data center again without impacting users is essential.
New Horizons has created a simple 1-page Azure Business Benefits Guide and Assessment. Use this guide to assess your business benefits with Microsoft Azure. Schedule a time to review your results in a free recommendations call.
In the next blog of our 5 part series The Business Benefits of Azure we'll discuss How to Keep Your Azure Solution Compliant. Subscribe to our blog to be notified of the next published post.