ePLDT supports strongerdisaster recovery program

MANILA, Philippines — A unit of PLDT Inc. is urging companies to strengthen disaster recovery plans to ensure continued operations and growth.

“We can never stress enough on how important an effective disaster recovery protocol is in ensuring business continuity and growth. Most companies see it as an additional expense but it really just boils down to how much data loss or even minutes of downtime can cost your business. In this day and age, a business can no longer afford to view disaster recovery as an optional IT (information technology) requirement,” ePLDT Inc. group chief operating officer Nerisse Ramos said.

While being ready for disasters would ensure business growth and success, not all companies have the necessary preparations in place.

Citing the global disaster recovery preparedness benchmark released by the Disaster Recovery Preparedness Council, ePLDT said 73 percent of companies have no adequate disaster recovery protocols in place.

According to ePLDT, this is likely because disaster recovery is not seen as a need and is perceived to be costly.

Data backup and protection are considered costly because of the needed hardware which brings in significant upfront costs and other charges that must be considered such as licensing costs for hardware or software, annual maintenance, and the personnel to manage the system.

Going for the traditional backup method is also more prone to human error as reproduction of data in several disks and hard drives can take up hours up to a whole day to finish, and mistakes are bound to happen such as mishandling and misplacement of devices.

As studies have shown it is difficult to resume operations after suffering a disaster and outage of critical systems can mean losses, ePLDT said companies that do not have disaster recovery plans risk losing their businesses.

To enable businesses to be prepared, ePLDT is offering them an affordable option through the cloud-based, Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) which uses vast and scalable infrastructure, and allows virtual access of assets, with little to no hardware and software expenditures.

As DRaaS requires fewer operational resources, companies are able to generate savings in software and hardware.

Businesses using DRaaS also do not have to worry about the misplacement of data drives because there is a data center which can handle both manmade and natural disasters.