May 2020 Chapter Meeting - Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

The May meeting of the Colorado Rocky Mountain Chapter of ACP featured Neal Luhman, Senior Solutions Engineer for Sungard Availability Services, speaking on a topic very much in the forefront of DRBC decisions.

Every organization, large or small, is responsible for preparing for disaster events and responding when events happen.  In handling this responsibility, the question becomes What makes sense for us to do ourselves, and what should we outsource?

Within the industry are many options for outsourcing, typically referred to as DRaaS.  Each organization needs to stay current with vendors’ capabilities, products, and costs.  With his many years’ experience with Sungard, Neal has the background to direct us through that analysis.

In determining the needs of an organization, some critical capabilities that products must incorporate include the ability to move data to and from various platforms, monitor and maintain security for both sources and targets, provide for testing and recovery, enable automation, and allow for flexibility as the organization grows or shrinks.

In his presentation, Neal touched on various vendors’ approaches and technologies and how they differentiate themselves from their competitors. 

Lastly, Neal discussed the importance of Lifecycle Management.   As tests are completed, lessons learned must be incorporated into the next test, server and DRaaS product releases must be managed and kept up to date, and hardware and all supporting infrastructure must be maintained.
 
For more information on Sungard Availability Services, click here.

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