In the previous years we saw businesses and homes destroyed by catastrophes like hurricanes, power outrages, fire & cyber attacks.

The business community has finally realised that disasters are not an issue and recognize the increase in frequency. These solutions for disaster recovery are no longer seen by businesses as just another expense and should be viewed as a necessity for the future and the survival of the business.

The biggest mistake that companies make is to view disaster recovery as an IT expense. It is important for enterprises to recognize that the main purpose of disaster recovery is to ensure the viability of business operations in the event of disaster.

Another myth IT professionals have faced for some time is that they believe they don’t require an emergency recovery solution when they’ve already made the investment in cloud backup services.

Although cloud backup is a must however, it is not a good idea to think of it as a substitute for a disaster recovery solution. The process of disaster recovery is essential to planning for business continuity. In reality the process of disaster recovery IS planning for business continuity.

In the event of choosing among the various of disaster recovery options, i.e on-premise only, versus cloud-based cloud, cloud-based definitely gets the nod of confidence.

What do IT professionals are thinking now

According to a study of IT professionals from 403 by Zetta, the IT industry’s 74 percent are confident in their own disaster recovery solutions on-premise however, when compared 90 percent of IT professionals feel comfortable with cloud-based disaster restoration.

Here are a few highlights of the report

• 95 percent of them reported having an emergency recovery plan
• 9 percent of them are using a cloud-based disaster recovery system
• 41 percent of users are using cloud-based and on-premise solutions.
• 46 percent are physical or on-premise disaster recovery system
• 4 percent of them have not yet implemented any kind of disaster recovery system

1 out of 3 IT professionals want for a new disaster recovery software within the next 12 months.

Other interesting details in this report are the most frequent reasons for IT downtime

Power outages account for 75 percent of the power outages

• Hardware errors account for 52 percent
• Human error accounts 35 percent of the total.
• Malware/Virus Attacks account for 34 percent
• Natural Disaster account 20 percent
• Onsite disasters account for 11 percent
• Data corruption is responsible for 26 percent

Updates and patches are 20 percent of the total

Patches or updates that were not expected account for 24 percent

Additionally, Mike Grossman, CEO of Zetta adds, “While many think of disaster recovery as preparing for catastrophic natural events, most IT downtime can be caused by simple power outages, hardware, and human errors, and increasingly, security vulnerabilities,”.

Impact of Disasters in 2016

Swiss Re issued an article detailing the damage that the world has suffered in 2016 as a result of natural catastrophes.

In their study the losses from disasters have increased to USD$158 billion in the year 2016. Below are a few more details from the report.

The economic loss from natural disaster and mam made catastrophes is USD $158 billion. This is substantially more than 2015’s USD $94 billion loss in the year 2015.

The loss resulting from catastrophes is USD $49 billion.

About 10000 people perished during disasters in 2016

Although the report does not identify or categorize the businesses that have suffered losses, it’s fair to suppose that a lot of companies were affected. The report also reveals the frequentity of these kinds of catastrophes, as well as the destruction they’re capable of creating.

But, it’s an encouraging sign IT professionals are now aware of the possibilities of cloud-based disaster restoration and are optimistic about cloud-based disaster recovery and are confident about.