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Companies Must Include SaaS Data Protection in Cloud Business Continuity Plan

Cloud has democratized access to infrastructure, providing a cost-efficient way for all organizations to develop an off-site backup and disaster recovery plan. This should include data protection and recovery for their core workloads as well as software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the latter of which may not be automatically protected by the platform.

In reassessing their data protection strategy when adopting a multicloud environment, organizations should review their service-level agreements and consider their edge devices. They also have to think about their SaaS data. This is a key component that often is overlooked when companies update their business continuity plan (BCP), since they wrongly assume their SaaS workloads already will be adequately protected with their move to the cloud.

Companies not only need to include SaaS as part of their multicloud discussions but also identify any availability gaps in their current backup processes. In addition, they need to anticipate where their business is heading over the next three to five years and whether their current data protection initiatives will facilitate those plans. Their assessment should encompass existing legacy systems and the number of manual tasks needed to maintain data backup and recovery on those systems. If it is significant, companies will have to step back and figure out the best way to reengineer it.

To understand their backup requirements for cloud-based software, businesses first need to recognize that they are responsible for data sitting in their SaaS applications. They then have to determine how quickly they need to restore data on that application in order to keep their business operations running. Topmost, their backup and recovery plans for SaaS data should be underpinned with a robust business continuity and disaster recovery framework for their primary workloads, across their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

To help enterprises with this, Amazon Web Services and partners such as Veeam offer a wide range of services to meet all of their customers' BCP requirements. That includes simple, repeatable testing so customers can more easily and frequently run BCP tests. They can further tap automation capabilities on the AWS platform to reduce human errors and improve recovery time.

AWS and its partners also provide data protection solutions for major SaaS applications, including Salesforce.com's Customer 360 and Microsoft Office 365. Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, for instance, safeguards against loss of access to Microsoft data, including that in Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams. With Veeam on AWS, businesses can back up their Microsoft 365 data to any location, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and restore individual Microsoft 365 items and files.

Customers running on AWS also can tap solutions that run native, fully automated backup and disaster recovery to safeguard and manage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Relational Database Service, Elastic File System and Virtual Private Cloud data. For example, Veeam Backup for AWS is designed to ease data protection and management, providing enterprise customers with a modular framework that adapts as their business needs evolve, so they will not be stuck with costly overheads brought on by rigid legacy systems.

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Gaining Cost and Operational Efficiencies With Cloud DR
One such organization gained flexibility and cost efficiencies when it moved its data recovery support to Veeam on AWS.

In 2014, Japanese food manufacturer Rock Field built a disaster recovery system that operated on a dedicated device, but its disk capacity was reaching its limit when the company upgraded its Windows operating system and devices. To overcome this obstacle and ensure its critical systems and data remained protected, the company made the decision to tap the cloud and deploy a more robust disaster recovery plan.

Founded in 1972 and headquartered in Kobe, Rock Field produces and sells SOZAI—or prepared foods—under a range of brands, including Kobe Croquettes, Itohan and Yugo. Its products are currently sold in 300 stores across Japan.

The organization has been clocking strong growth since its inception but faces unique risks due to its earthquake-prone domestic market. Specifically, the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake caused extensive damage, during which production operations at its primary factory and office were suspended. After experiencing the collapse of its office IT system, Rock Field invested in efforts to better safeguard its critical business systems and data, leading to the 2014 deployment of the dedicated disaster recovery system.

When it upgraded its Windows server platform, the volume of data that needed to be backed up increased yearly. To cope with disk capacity that was gradually reaching its limit, Rock Field cut its backup cycles from three days' worth of data to just one day.

At the same time, various business systems operated on the single disaster recovery device, which triggered concerns about performance. Rock Field then scouted for a suitable solution that also could support its anticipated move to the cloud. It decided on AWS and coupled that with Veeam's Backup and Replication platform for its ability to handle both physical and virtual environments as well as verify data backup and restore.

No longer burdened with having to carry out hardware maintenance work such as disk replacement and updates, Rock Field took advantage of its migration to Veeam on AWS and boosted its backup capacity from 25 to 35 target systems. It also was able to maintain data backups over three generations.

In addition, it streamlined its disaster recovery management load with a more user-friendly operating and reporting function. The company's data architecture currently encompasses both physical and virtual systems, with disaster recovery backups carried out for every virtual machine in its environment. On its physical infrastructure, Veeam agents sit on every server to facilitate disaster recovery backups.

Rock Field was able to cut the operational management costs of its business continuity plan by about 30%, through reduced capital investments when it moved to Veeam for AWS. The smaller cost footprint enabled the company to further expand the scope of its backup and improve the efficiency of its disaster recovery tests. The cost savings are critical, as most companies face challenges securing a big investment in a system that will be activated only in an emergency.

Achieving Speed and Reliable Data Recovery
Another organization was able to make significant gains in data recovery time when it turned on Veeam as the backbone of its business continuity and disaster recovery plans across its business units.

Based in Perth, Australia, Wesfarmers Chemicals, Energy & Fertilisers (WesCEF) operates chemical, energy and fertilizer businesses that serve multiple sectors in local as well as global markets. Running a business that vast and diverse meant its data recovery eventually grew sluggish. WesCEF was using three backup solutions, none of which could recover critical systems fast enough, including its ERP systems. This could have had a serious impact on its operations, including the inability to resolve customer queries or add new ones if its Oracle E-Business Suite could not be recovered.

WesCEF chose to go with Veeam to improve its recovery speed, performance and scalability. For one, Veeam was able to push WesCEF's data recovery speed up tenfold, from hours to mere minutes. The company also taps Veeam for data backups on premises to mitigate the risk of losing access to and control of data in Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business.

Backup data copies are sent to Amazon S3 for more cost-efficient and long-term data retention. This is especially important for WesCEF, where every business unit requires access to all the data it has generated over decades. Coupling Veeam with the AWS service ensures that the company's data is protected and remains available on S3 over the long term.

For customers such as WesCEF and Rock Field, disaster recovery on AWS facilitates quick data restoration with reduced complexity and delivers lower management overheads with lower operational requirements. BCP should evolve with technical advancements, and organizations will realize significant advantages when they tap cloud-based solutions over traditional on-premises data backup systems.

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Source: https://www.techtarget.com/searchcloudcomputing/AWScloud/Companies-Must-Include-SaaS-Data-Protection-in-Cloud-Business-Continuity-Plan

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