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Cloud Migration is Easier Than You Think with Backup-as-a-Service
By Rebecca Rosen
Today, businesses are under more pressure to modernize their IT systems and protect their data from system failures or cyberattacks. Rising remote work and the resulting increase in mobile endpoints have expanded cybercriminals’ opportunities, as well as businesses’ vulnerabilities to attacks.
While “data backup” and “data protection” certainly aren’t new strategies, most deployed backup and protection technologies exist in the form of older tape or disk stored onsite or offsite.
The new kid on the block, Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS), is a cloud-based alternative that offers several key benefits over more traditional backup methods.
Benefits of Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS)
BaaS advantages include:
- Affordability of a subscription service with no upfront capital expenditure
- Accessibility from anywhere at anytime
- Immutability, which is the inability to be deleted, overwritten or manipulated
- Reliability with automation to ensure backups happen on schedule
- Scalability to add or decrease storage as needed
- Recoverability of data from anywhere
- Capability of provider experts who can apply best practices
- Capacity by freeing up IT teams to focus on higher-value projects
While these benefits apply to businesses of all sizes, the last point on outsourcing is particularly important if your business is a company that insources day-to-day IT management. Instead, you can put that IT brain trust on innovating and implementing processes that generate revenue, reduce costs, or deliver other competitive advantages.
BaaS Begins the Cloud Journey
If you’ve not yet moved services to the cloud, don’t stress. BaaS is an easy entry point for your business to begin migration. With BaaS, you can test the waters of cloud storage without impacting production workloads. As you become more comfortable with the flexibility, security and value of the cloud, you can advance to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and many others.
Is BaaS Right for You?
If you’re wondering if BaaS is right for you, consider the following questions. If you don’t have good answers (or any answers at all), then BaaS may be a good option.
- What are you doing for backup?
- How often do you test your backup and restoration?
- How are you accessing data stored offsite?
- How much time does a team (or a single team member) spend on backup?
- How confident are you that you can recover, and how long does it take?
This last question is perhaps the most critical. With the proliferation of cyber threats today recoverability is vital to establishing cyber resilience. How long will it take to get that data back? What shape will it be in. BaaS provides a 5X reduction in restore times for mission-critical applications, according to IDC.
BaaS Best Practices
Data backup isn’t a one-time “check the box” activity. Rather, it’s a process in which you must have complete confidence. BaaS best practices call for leveraging onsite and offsite solutions from a reputable provider like Cox Business.
We recommend a “3-2-1” approach for data backup with redundancy and resiliency:
- 3 copies of your data – production, offsite and onsite
- 2 types of media onsite – disk and cloud, or disk and tape, or cloud and tape
- 1 offsite backup – Cox Business Cloud, for example
Cox Business offers the resources you need when it counts. Response and recovery time are essential when you need restoration or other assistance. If you trust your data backup to a small, locally managed service provider, what will you do if your emergency is after hours or your support contact is out of the office? With Cox Business, you have a deep Help Desk and round-the-clock support.
Cox makes it easy to get the backup technology, expertise and support you need. Contact a Cox Business Specialist today.
Rebecca Rosen is Senior Director of Marketing, West Region for Cox Business.
Photo Credit: Cox Communications
