There’s no doubt that data is one of the most valuable assets a company owns today. While the digital landscape is growing rapidly, the importance of data is growing like never before, and we can expect it to grow unconditionally in the near future.
To no surprise, it is estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day by 2025.
What brings with the substantial growth in the creation of data is the challenge of managing and storing the data safely.
There have been instances where companies have suffered significant downfall due to data loss. Reports show that almost 60% of small companies leave business within six months after a data breach or cyber attack.
Whether it be from user error, hackers, natural disasters, or malware, it’s of utmost importance for businesses to keep their data safe. Keeping this in mind, in this blog, we’ll be exploring the prevention of data loss and its recovery. Let’s begin,
Understanding Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS)
What is a Backup-as-a-Service?
Backup-as-a-Service, or BaaS, is a cloud-based solution in which a third-party backup provider manages data storage and Backup of an organization. Unlike traditional practices where data is stored on-premises using tape drives, external hard drives, or dedicated servers, Backup-as-a-Service involves data backup to a remote, cloud-based server.
Backup as-a-Service has been gaining popularity recently because of its flexibility, scalability, and ease of implementation. With a Backup-as-a-Service, an organization can focus on its core business activities without worrying about the data.
Importance of Backup-as-a-Service (Baas)
Let’s discuss the importance of Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS). As data is one of the most valuable assets a company owns, let’s explore why Backup-as-a-service is important for the prevention of data loss.
Enhanced Data Security
One of the significant risks companies are exposed to is the potential loss of data due to data breaches. Securing data against threats is crucial.
BaaS service providers take data security seriously. Your valuable data is stored at secure remote locations with additional encryption for protection. This significantly minimizes the risk of data threat and loss due to hackers, admin/user error, or even natural disasters.
Business Continuity
Loss of data poses an organization with several threats, including financial and non-financial risks. The financial risk involves requiring additional funds to recover the lost data.
While companies with enough capital can manage additional funds, it takes a lot of work for small companies. In addition to the financial risks, non-financial risks such as loss of reputation, legal problems, and productivity loss are also caused by data loss. This ultimately affects the entire operation of an organization and poses a question mark to its continuity.
With BaaS in a place where all your data is safely backed up, you can minimize the financial and non-financial risks arising from data loss.
Quick and Efficient Data Recovery
There have been instances when an organisation takes significant time and effort for the recovery of data. The time taken for data recovery can affect the entire organization’s operation.
BaaS ensures quick and efficient data recovery in the event of data loss. This is because the BaaS provider stores your data in multiple locations, independent of one another. In the event of data loss, organizations can restore their data from the cloud where your data is backed up.
The easy and quick data recovery helps organizations minimize downtime and continue their operations swiftly.
Benefits of Backup-as-a-service
Besides data security, safety, and recovery, which are must-haves for an organization, Backup-as-a-service has several other advantages. The benefits of BaaS are cost, accessibility, and flexibility, to name a few. Let’s explore some of the benefits of Backup-as-a-service,
Cost Reduction
Choosing a third-party BaaS service provider can reduce capital expenditures and operational costs. This is simply because the BaaS service provider will provide all your data storage and safety services for a subscription fee.
First, it will reduce your capital expenditures as you don’t need to invest in upfront capital expenses such as hardware, software licenses, and infrastructure. On the other hand, the service provider will provide remote management and support services. So, you don’t need an on-premises IT staff to be involved in day-to-day backup operations.
Enhanced Scalability and Flexibility
The need for data backup and storage in your organization might fluctuate over time. With Backup-as-a-service, you can quickly scale up or down your backup capacity.
Unlike traditional ways of backing up data, you don’t need to invest in additional hardware or software if your backup requirement increases. In contrast, you can quickly scale down your backup capacity if your data backup needs decrease.
Ease of Management and Use
Backup-as-a-service provides organizations with a high level of convenience. Since the service provider owns all the hardware equipment, there’s no need for management from your side.
As an organization, you only need to connect to the cloud and use the managed cloud services. It’s all on the service provider to manage the infrastructure and software.
Increased Efficiency and Productivity
The BaaS service provider looks after all the data backup and storage. This frees the organization of the data protection, safety, and backup burden.
This makes it possible for organizations to focus on their core business activities. This helps in improving the efficiency of organizations. In addition to that, the ability to swiftly recover data reduces downtime without any effect on productivity.
How to choose a BaaS Service Provider?
Going through the importance and benefits of Backup-as-a-service, you might have realized why Backup-as-a-service is essential. What’s equally crucial with BaaS is choosing the right BaaS service provider.
Let’s now have a look into how to choose the right BaaS service provider,
Assess your requirements
The BaaS service provider you will be choosing will be directly dependent upon your business or organization’s backup and recovery needs. First, you need to determine your organization’s backup and recovery requirements.
After you assess your organization’s needs, use it to make choices among the BaaS providers. You’ll have to consider your organizational factors, such as data volume, recovery time objectives (RTO), and recovery point objectives (RPO).
Security and Compliance
Choosing a BaaS service provider means trusting it with your valuable data. So, there’s no chance you ignore the security and compliance the BaaS provider offers. Ensure the service provider implements robust security measures such as end-to-end encryption and multifactor authentication.
In addition to that, make sure the service provider meets all the applicable data protection standards applicable to your organization.
Data Recovery Capabilities
You’ll need to ensure that the BaaS service provider you choose can recover data. You can check the speed and flexibility with which the service provider can recover data in case of loss.
Understand how the service provider can recover data in different scenarios. Ensure that the provider can meet your data recovery needs.
Reliability, Availability, and Customer Support
It would help if you were choosing a highly reliable BaaS service provider with a strong track record of uptime and redundant systems. Ensure you can access your data even in case of hardware failures or disasters.
Similarly, evaluate the customer support services the BaaS provider offers. Analyze the response time, support channels, and the efforts it makes to solve issues promptly. You can go through the provider’s reputation and customer reviews for this.
Features, Pricing and Cost Structure
The other important thing to consider is the features, pricing, and cost structure of the BaaS service provider. Find out the flexibility and scalability the service provider offers within the price.
The best idea is to compare different service providers’ pricing and cost structure. It gives you insight into the industry pricing. Choose the service provider with a pricing structure that aligns with your budget and usage patterns.
DataHub as a BaaS Provider
With almost a decade of experience, DataHub is Nepal’s leading and most trusted Data Center and Cloud Service provider. Besides other services that include co-location, hosting, platform-as-a-service and premium data center services, DataHub also offers Backup-as-a-service(BaaS).
As a BaaS provider, DataHub offers highly redundant, disk-based backup solutions for its online services. You don’t need to worry a bit about the safety and recovery of your precious data.
Why Choose DataHub for Backup-as-a-service Provider?
Choosing the right BaaS service provider is vital as you trust it with your valuable data. As discussed earlier, there are several factors you should consider while selecting a Backup-as-a-service Provider.
Here are a few reasons what DataHub offers your organization as a BaaS provider :
Data Security
All your data backed up at DataHub is sorted with 256-bit encryption technology. This offers your precious data with the highest level of security.
Recovery and Backup
DataHub has systems that are powerful as well as effective. This makes it possible to minimize data recovery with its Point-in-time Restore features. In addition to that, here are the Backup features DataHub offers,
Automatic Scheduled Backup: This allows you to schedule backups regularly and as per your needs.
Block Level Incremental Backup: It ensures all your backups are as efficient as possible.
Concurrent Backup: Allows you to initiate simultaneous backups to multiple destinations that add to the redundancy of data and increase the efficiency of data recovery.
Multiple Backup Locations: Your precious data is stored at two sites equipped with top-notch hardware and software. This makes it possible to keep your data safe, secure, and recoverable even in disasters.
Point-in-time Restoration
DataHub offers Point-in-time restoration services, meaning you can restore your database to its state anytime. This mainly helps your business resume its operation instantly as it minimizes recovery time and data loss.
24/7 Support Services
As a leading data center and cloud service provider, you can expect a prompt response to your issues. DataHub offers 24/7 support services for any queries or issues related to its service.
Conclusion
As data is one of the most valuable assets an organisation owns today, it’s of utmost importance that organisations ensure the safety and security of data.
Backup-as-a-service is important as it helps organisations in recovery as well as prevention of data loss due to factors such as data breaches, hackers, hardware failures, and other unforeseen events.
DataHub as a BaaS service provider provides reliable and best Backup-as-a-service (BaaS) for keeping your organization’s data safe and secure.
