Business Continuity Checklist

Questions to ask when selecting a backup and disaster recovery solution.

1. Do you provide a hybrid cloud backup solution?

A hybrid cloud backup solution is optimal to achieve intelligent business continuity, as it encapsulates the best of the private and public models to form a feature rich, highly efficient, and affordable system

2. Can you provide my client instant local virtualization?

Downtime costs you and your client money. Being down for hours is simply unacceptable. Current BDR solutions should allow you to have servers booting instantly locally so that client services can be restored and back in the right place in a matter of minutes.

3. Can you provide proof of backup? What proof do you have of successful data backup?

Your BDR vendor should be able to provide screenshot verification.

4. Do you virtualize off-site?

It’s imperative to offer your clients the peace of mind that their critical business infrastructure can be brought online quickly in the cloud. This allows continuous uptime.

5. Do you deliver an off-site sync method that manages bandwidth?

It’s critical that a BDR solution be able to prioritize if data is local or off-site, thus managing bandwidth to provide greater flexibility, increased reliability and higher transfer speeds of your off-site backups.

6. Do you have multiple data centers, in geographically diverse locations?

This is important for three reasons. First, it ensures that even if data is removed locally, there is a secure copy off-site that can be restored. Second, it saves money because your local device capacity does not have to cover your entire backup repository. And third, in case of a regionalized disaster, at least one data center location must not be affected.

7. Do you offer flexible contracts and upgrade policies?

Constant change is a fact of life in IT. It’s critical to select a vendor whose goal is to help its Partners succeed, by offering flexible contracts and upgrade policies. Also, in the unfortunate event that a client is lost, it’s important you are not on the hook for their BDR contract.

8. Do you provide US-based technical support?

If you’re in the middle of a backup or disaster crisis, you need the best technical and customer support available, at the time it’s required. 9. Do you focus exclusively on the Channel? Choose a partner that is 100% committed to your success, and only succeeds when its partners succeed.

10. Do you offer Intelligent Business Continuity?

Only an intelligent business continuity solution takes BDR to the next level, to mitigate risk and keep your clients’ systems running in the event of a technical or natural disaster.