Yet another traditional concern with DR is uncertainty. Many DR administrators simply do not know if they can rely on being able to recover the data they back up.

All else considered, the worst DR is no DR. Yet the awful truth is that most companies have found it difficult to get any DR plan or solution off the ground.

Cloud-based DR services have the potential to address many of these concerns. First of all, they are inherently easy to use and manage, as they are typically deployed as turnkey solutions, with the back end hosted and managed by the provider.

Because they operate in virtualized environments, they are generally easier to scale as needed, providing more deployment flexibility, and future-proofing against unanticipated growth. This scalability also provides broader DR options (such as supplementing or enhancing VMware, NAS or bare-metal recovery solutions), thus enabling a best-fit deployment.

Perhaps most importantly, by making the process easier, they can enable overburdened IT organizations to actually get a DR solution deployed in the first place.