By Kirk Drake | December 15, 2013

What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and how does it impact Credit Unions?

If you or your company does not currently spend money on backing up key systems, sending data offsite, planning for disasters etc. than this post isn’t for you. If you are interested in learning more about how cloud services will impact disaster recovery and specifically Disaster Recovery as a Service than read on.

As a Service

The “As a Service” or AAS world is all about taking and bundling a number of smaller solutions into one major solution. For example, Software as a Service takes all of the components needed to deliver the solution such as bandwidth, database environment, network and switching, application hosting and the actual business software and combines them as one so that the end Credit Union or client pays for the solution on a monthly basis. The goal is to eliminate all of the individual decisions and components that a client would have to make to run your software and just make it simple.

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

Disaster Recovery As A Service is no different. This article by Disaster Recovery Journal, The Future of Disaster Recovery As A Service provides a great overview of the general trends. For Credit Unions specifically there are some more distinct opportunities.

Application to Credit Unions

For Credit Unions DRaaS should include all of your third party connections (think credit card, debit, ATM, Online banking, Federal Reserve, etc.). It should include having managed backups offsite of all your key IT Systems. Your core provider (Fiserv, JackHenry, OSI, Harland etc.) probably also provides Core Recovery as a Service. In addition the Credit Union should get workspace, phones, printers, pcs etc. all in the package. Hopefully you end up with little or no capital expense and a business partner that manages all of the individual solutions as one enabling easier disaster recovery testing, disaster recovery, failover and failback. Ultimately the goal should be to allow your employees to focus on the day to day business as much as possible and not all the individual parts.

Do you need help in determining if DRaaS is applicable for your organization? Are you concerned about which applications you should move to the cloud first? If so e-mail info@ongoingoperations.com or fill out this form: