Cloud-based Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS) is becoming big business. Research and Markets forecasts the global market of RaaS and cloud-based business continuity will reach $5.77 billion by 2018, creating major opportunities for business continuity and risk management specialists alike. Likewise, Reportstack announced recently the global Disaster Recovery-as-a Service (DRaaS) market is expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 54.64 percent from 2014 to 2018.[1]
One of the leading drivers for small and mid-size businesses (SMBs) as well as enterprises seeking cloud solutions is Disaster Recovery (DR).[2]Organizations seek improved resiliency and failover in response to service disruptions of all kinds including natural disasters, cyber-attacks and technical malfunctions. In 2013, the financial impact of natural disasters worldwide was more than double the $100 billion estimate of 1990.[3]McAfee® Labs Threats Report indicates service disruptions are inevitable and becoming more predictable, with a reported 20 million new types of malware in the third quarter of 2013 alone. In a recent survey, IDC found that 71 percent of respondents experienced less than 10 hours of annual downtime, with a projected financial impact for SMBs of $125,000. Larger enterprise organizations could potentially have a corresponding annual financial impact of $17 million.[4] Dun & Bradstreet surveyed Fortune 500 companies with 59% of respondents reporting 1.5 hours of downtime each week, amounting to a projected $46 million impact annually for companies of 10,000 employees or more.[5]