JJ Milner, MD of Global Micro Solutions.

It’s an interesting dichotomy – disaster recovery (DR) is one of the most important, but neglected aspects of backup preparedness. Even though cloud’s scaling and affordability has made DR somewhat less daunting, particularly if everything is configured properly on the front-end, unavoidable disasters can happen. You need an ironclad DR plan or, at the very least, managed disaster recovery, also known as Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS). For JJ Milner, the chief cloud architect and MD of Global Micro Solutions, it’s about business continuity. Privacy rules such as GDPR and PoPI require businesses to protect personal data and notify regulators of data breaches within a certain timeframe. Complying with these regulations means having a business continuity plan, “and you can’t do that without a good disaster recovery plan,” says Milner.

While it’s easy to say DR should include a step-by-step plan that addresses each type of downtime or disaster, Milner says that DR is different for every customer. “You practise until you get good at it. That, for me, is the best kind of plan.