With the disruption of business models in recent years, nearly every business can now be classified as a “digital business”, regardless of the industry. IT infrastructure has become essential to modern business models to keep pace with consumer demands and competitively deliver services.
However, modern IT systems are vulnerable to interference that can spell disaster for businesses, whether inflicted naturally or human induced. To reduce IT vulnerability and stem disruption events, businesses require disaster recovery planning to protect core IT infrastructure. Yet, it can be challenging for many companies to know where to start.
In Element Critical’s eBook, “IT Leaders: Disaster Recovery Guide,” it outlines an overview of the critical steps businesses need to take to create a comprehensive disaster recovery plan. Businesses are amplifying their disaster recovery and prevention planning by leveraging reliable data center partners that deliver enterprise class colocation services to keep their business running in the event of a disaster.
Prepare for an IT Disaster
Disasters can happen to anyone, anytime and anywhere; no business is immune to the risk of data loss or system downtime. Even low-risk enterprises are affected by natural disasters. Furthermore, only 2% of companies can recover from an IT disaster in less than an hour. When downtime can cost as much as $5 million per hour, many businesses cannot afford to be unprotected. For this reason, it’s vital for all organizations—no matter how big or small—to have a disaster recovery plan in place. In fact, having a disaster recovery plan in place is now an integral part of day-to-day business operations.
There are many factors to consider when creating a disaster recovery plan, ranging from discovering the scope of your IT resources, prevention and restoration procedures, to operational management and communication strategies during a crisis event.
When building an effective data information management plan, choosing proven partners with purpose-built facilities in a safe and secure location for your disaster recovery site is a crucial step toward risk mitigation. Element Critical offers data center colocation in geographically diverse locations and a full suite of services to give enterprise customers an advantage in maintaining uptime and transitioning operations to restore services effectively in the event of a disaster.
Always on with Element Critical
In a world where disasters are non-stop, it’s essential to know you can rely on an IT partner invested in achieving your business goals. And when it comes to disaster recovery, Element Critical delivers the always-on capability to protect your critical data. Here are some factors to consider when leveraging colocation for disaster recovery.
State-of-the-art Facility
Element Critical operates Tier 3 data centers in Austin, Houston, Chicago, North Virginia, and Silicon Valley. These facilities are purpose-built, and operating to deliver high performance availability. Locations are selected to optimize customer access yet situated to mitigate risk from local natural disasters and security risks. Each facility is purpose-built to withstand disaster impacts for that region and operates with fully redundant equipment and cooling solutions.
More importantly, Element Critical’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) commits to 100% uptime. Unlike carriers who plan failure into their contracts with several .9’s added behind the decimal, Element Critical’s contracts make availability a priority that comes backed by their guarantee.
Element Critical’s colocation facilities are far better equipped to protect IT systems in a natural disaster than average companies can afford to build their in-house data centers. Our sites offer integrated protection from floods, hurricanes, and security risks. Multi-layered security from Vesda fire systems, crash-rated fences, cameras, on-site security, mantraps, and biometric access are all implemented with one purpose in mind – to keep your data safe.
Redundant Connectivity
Network connectivity is vital to maintain communication, application access, and data sharing in a disaster. A plan to restore network services is an essential component of a network disaster recovery strategy, and this strategy should include access to backup data and backup data center sites.
Element Critical data centers host many network service providers to provide highly secure direct cloud and private network connectivity from any one of the five strategic markets. This gives companies an option on where they house their core infrastructure and their backup IT stacks while taking advantage of cross-connects to numerous network providers and solutions.
Proven Data Center Teams
Customers who select colocation services want to maintain a level of control over their IT environment which is not possible with cloud deployments. As such, local facility teams at Element Critical’s colocation data centers become a natural extension to your IT team.
Element Critical’s expert team is always on call 24/7/365, no matter what time of the day or night it is, they are always available to help get your business back up and running. Yet, more importantly, their teams have proven uptime history. Enterprise-class Element Critical data centers are led by a team of industry experts with years of experience in not only ensuring your critical systems stay up and running but also compliance adherence and day-to-day operations are aimed at preventing and withstanding disaster events. Site teams are also well-versed in transparent customer communications protocols. Open lines of communication, regular updates and play-by-play approach to communication aids in delivering the peace of mind that keeps enterprise customers leasing in these facilities year after year.
Colocation and Disaster Recovery
Moving critical IT into a strategically located colocation data center is an attractive option for CIOs concerned about downtime and loss of critical data. Unlike cloud technology, colocation delivers more competitive rates and greater pricing stability. A colocation partner reduces the need to invest in capital expenditures (CapEx) resources to build, staff, and manage an on-premises data center. Plus, data center operators that are solely focused on uptime and experienced in disaster preparedness can offer significant resource relief for businesses to focus on innovation and growth.
With secure facilities built for maximum resiliency, Element Critical has you covered. To read all about how IT leaders can prepare for disaster recovery, you can download the disaster recovery guide here.
Don’t wait any longer–contact us today to learn more about how we can help keep your business running smoothly.
