Top 8 Disaster Recovery Software Companies in 2021

Disaster recovery (DR) is defined as an organization’s method of circumventing or minimizing data loss and business disruptions resulting from catastrophic events — human-made or otherwise. The fundamental purpose of DR software is to provide continuity and recovery in case of any disruptions. In this article, we will discuss the top eight disaster recovery software for 2021 and beyond.

Table of Contents:

• • What Is Disaster Recovery Software?
  • Key Features of Disaster Recovery Software
  • Top 8 Disaster Recovery Companies in 2021

What Is Disaster Recovery Software?

Disaster recovery (DR) is defined as an organization’s method of circumventing or minimizing data loss and business disruptions resulting from catastrophic events — human-made or otherwise. 

Disaster recovery software’s fundamental purpose is to provide business continuity and recovery in case of any business disruption. The critical objective of disaster recovery planning is to recover and restore data and applications in their pre-event or working state in the least amount of time and minimum hassle. 

In today’s environment, no organization, big or small, can afford to ignore disaster recovery. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has put the focus on the disaster recovery and business continuity plans of the enterprises. Further, there is a marked increase in the number of natural disasters in the last few years. 

Any business disruption can lead to a significant financial loss. Infrastructure failure can cost around $100,000 per hourOpens a new window , whereas critical application failure costs range from $500,000 to $1 million per hour. Many businesses cannot recover from such losses. Nearly 40% of small businesses do not reopenOpens a new window after navigating through such a disaster, and about 25% fail within the first year after the crisis.

Business disruption may also result in the loss of credibility and customers, which can take a long time to rebuild. A disaster can also lead to legal and compliance challenges and impact the organization’s return on investment. An enterprise with a comprehensive, reliable, and well-thought-out disaster recovery solution is better placed to bounce back from a business disruption.

Disaster recovery is essential now because of increased digitization and our growing dependence on digital tools and applications to carry out regular and mission-critical tasks. Christophe Bertrand, a senior analyst at ESG, explains, “Data is an asset that must be protected, a business must continue in the face of planned and unplanned interruptions, and compliance requirements must be met. Data growth is not slowing down, meaning that organizations will need to keep planning accordingly and archive a growing volume of data.”

Also Read: What Is Disaster Recovery? Definition, Cloud and On-Premise, Benefits and Best Practices

How does disaster software recovery work? 

Traditionally, building and maintaining a disaster recovery site has been an expensive and complicated exercise. This is why it was something only large businesses undertook. But now, the pay-as-you-use model or disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) that leverages the power of cloud computing has made disaster recovery economical for companies of all sizes. DRaaS is installed on servers and computers to facilitate backup, synchronization, and data recovery.

Typically, traditional solutions focus on preventing data loss but not on the recovery speed. However, extended downtime leads to significant financial loss. DRaaS, which uses cloud’s efficiency, agility, and flexibility, can bounce back faster, ensuring minimal downtime. It is essentially a cloud computing service model that allows businesses to back up and replicate their business-critical data to a third party. This way, it can be accessed and recovered in the event of a catastrophe, enabling the businesses to get up and start running again easily and quickly. 

In addition to being highly cost-effective, a DRaaS model can protect from natural and human-made disasters, achieve data and geographical redundancy, enable robust failover testing, automate the recovery, and help manage data centers remotely. 

For example, in case there is an earthquake near your premises, and you experience a power outage, a DR plan will kick in. With pre-set disaster response actions, your managed service provider (MSP) will be able to reach the information stored in the cloud and restore critical data and software. This will minimize the negative impact on your business, which would otherwise be out of action for a few days.

A key advantage of cloud-based DRaaS is the immediate failover applications. It reconnects users via VPN or remote desktop protocol (RDP) and ensures fallback to rebuilt servers in the customer data center. Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions meet their services in different ways, which can be customized in line with your particular needs and requirements.

Disaster recovery software vs. backup software

Disaster recovery software is often confused with backup software. However, backup software only ensures that data is replicated and stored and can be quickly restored if lost or corrupted. DR software, on the other hand, offers much more than that.

It backs up your IT systems, ensuring complete recovery of essential data, processes, and programs. DR software is designed to replicate your entire computing environment, right from data to systems, networks, and applications, and make it available when your primary IT environment is no longer functional. Further, it provides remote access to vital IT systems and software to your organization anytime, anywhere. It is an integral part of your disaster recovery plan.

Also Read: 10 Best Practices for Disaster Recovery Planning (DRP)

Key Features of Disaster Recovery Software

Before you decide to opt for a disaster recovery software, make sure that it includes the following must-have features: 

Key Features of Disaster Recovery Software

1. Automatic backup of critical data

The primary functionality of disaster recovery software is to create a backup of your servers and workloads. Typically, once you set up the program, it’s automated and doesn’t involve your active participation. Automatic backup is crucial to ensure that you don’t need to create a backup of your data and systems periodically. It would be best to opt for software that offers automatic backup of your applications and data.  

2. Reliable and flexible options for recovery

In the best-case scenario, disaster recovery software should help in the quick restoration of applications to ensure minimal interruption. The service level agreement (SLA) with the DR vendor should mention how long it will take to restore operations in the event of a disaster. It should also include how frequently data will be backed. These are known as the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). 

Before you decide the recovery options for your assets, the first step is to make a comprehensive list of all your assets, including network equipment, servers, workstations, software, cloud, mobile devices, and so on. The second step is to divide this list into critical assets, essential assets, and other assets. As the name suggests, critical assets are crucial for your business’ basic operations. They can include things like email servers. Essential assets are the good-to-have parts of your assets, but your business can still function without them. Lastly, the other assets are those that don’t have any significant impact on your business. 

The SLA should clearly define the recovery time objective (RTO) for critical assets. Essentially, this depends on your business. For instance, in an ecommerce app, you need to restore the payment gateway to minimize the financial damage immediately.  

3. Easy billing structure

An overly complicated billing structure can lead to avoidable issues and conflicts later on. An easy-to-understand billing gives you an unambiguous indication of what to expect at the end of the month and allows you to plan accordingly.  

Also Read: 5 Step Guide to Business Continuity Planning (BCP) in 2021

4. Support for multiple data types

Any backup and recovery solution should come with the capability to support multiple types of data, be it server images, NetApp, Hyper-V, and VMware, or others. Essentially, this allows the organizations to recover data on multiple platforms, which helps in the quick recovery of the data.

In case the data is in a cloud environment, you need to ensure that your backup solution allows data compression to reduce the volume of data sent over the network. This is important to provide efficient storage and backup of your data. It also leads to easy and quick retrieval of data during the recovery process. 

You can also check whether the backup solution comes with strong encryption to safeguard your data. Typically, backup solutions using FIPS 140-2 certified encryption. Make sure that the encryption is done at the source before it is saved to the network. This is done to protect the data as it moves into a public system. 

It is important to remember that the replicated data needs to be in a secure and protected environment. Ensure that features like firewall, antivirus, and anti-malware are applied and regularly updated, so the data is available when you need it.  

5. Support for multiple platforms

Choose a solution that supports all platforms and operating systems, be it Linux, Windows, or iOS. This will ensure that all kinds of platforms are covered. Disaster recovery solutions should be hardware- and platform-agnostic so that they don’t impact the overall DR initiative. 

While opting for different disaster recovery software, you must choose a solution that offers flexibility, integration of backups, ensures reliability, offers rapid and reliable failover and takes care of any security concerns, and offers cloud-based storage and backup.  

6. Efficient capture, storage, and recovery of data

The DR software should come with clear instructions on creating and storing a backup of your data. The instructions should specify data duplication into secondary and tertiary copies and notify you immediately if and when a backup fails. It is vital to ensure that the disaster recovery solution works, and one cannot wait for a disaster to find out. Failover testing is an essential service that can determine whether the solution will actually work when disaster strikes. 

While opting for different disaster recovery software, choose a solution that offers flexibility, integration of backups, ensures reliability, offers rapid and reliable failover and takes care of any security concerns, and offers cloud-based storage and backup. 

Also Read:  Will Extreme Weather Events Affect Your Business? Lessons From the Texas Winter Storm

Top 8 Disaster Recovery Companies in 2021 

There are several disaster recovery software products available in the market today. We bring you a list of the top 8 disaster recovery companies in 2021 (listed alphabetically) to help you decide the most appropriate one to meet your needs.

Disclaimer: These listings are based on publicly available information and include vendor websites that sell to mid-to-large enterprises. Readers are advised to conduct their own final research to ensure the best fit for their unique organizational needs.

1. Arcserve

Overview: This software is known to come with easy deployment and management capabilities. It supports the recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) without any on-premises hardware. It mirrors your network in the cloud, making it accessible anywhere anytime. 

Features: 

• • Arcserve has several built-in security protocols to ensure data security.
  • It offers better data protection with encryption.
  • Arcserve provides VPN access to the recovered environment at no additional cost.
  • Its software comes with a centralized, self-service console, making it easy to manage. 

Editorial comment: Arcserve is known to be secure, reliable, and easy to manage. On the flip side, its backup and restore processes are designed specifically for Microsoft Windows. Users should also note that they don’t offer any true bare metal recovery option. 

Pricing: Subscription license for one year with 1 TB storage costs around $1,865.99.

2. Carbonite Cloud Backup 

Overview: With a low entry price, user-friendly interface, and easy deployment, Carbonite Cloud Backup software is designed for small and medium enterprises.

Features: 

• • Carbonite Cloud Backup provides several backup options like Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Office 365.
  • It provides advanced encryption to ensure data security.  
  • Carbonite Cloud Backup is known to be easy to deploy and use. 
  • It also provides free support to Carbonite Safe users. 

Editorial comment: This software is easy to install and comes with 24/7 support. It also has a relatively low price of entry and supports industry standards for security. It is also compliant with ISO 27001-, SOC 1- and SOC 2-. However, Carbonite is limited to Windows and Mac OS X. Users should note Carbonite doesn’t offer third-party cloud support.

Pricing: Carbonite Safe offers three different plans:

• Basic – $71.99 / year per computer: Automatic cloud backup for photos, music, documents, and more
• Plus – $111.99 / year per computer: Automatic cloud backup of your computer and external hard drive
• Prime – $149.99 / year per computer: With automatic video backup and the option to have a copy of your backup shipped to you anywhere in the U.S.

Also Read: Offsite Data Replication: A Great Way To Meet Recovery Time Objectives

3. CrashPlan

Overview: A comprehensive solution for disaster recovery, Crashplan comes is apt for small businesses.

Features: 

• • CrashPlan offers enhanced security with data encryption.  
  • It provides back up of limited file types. 
  • CrashPlan offers mobile access to the system.  
  • It, however, provides back up of limited file types.  
  • You can control for how long to keep the deleted files. 
  • CrashPlan has dedicated support staff to help you address any issue.

Editorial comments: With competitive pricing, it is perfect for small and medium businesses. The data is encrypted, further securing your files. CrashPlan, however, does not back up all file types. Users should note that they also store the deleted files. 

Pricing: Plans start at $10 per month per computer.

4. Ekco Disaster Recovery

Overview: Ekco Disaster Recovery claims to offer secure backup and disaster recovery solutions to help enterprises. It was earlier known as Plan Disaster Recovery. 

Features: 

• • The data is turned into a virtual environment providing easy access to the user in case of a disaster. 
  • Ekco disaster recovery solution provides access to a secure VPN to manage the systems. 
  • The backup data systems are also checked for errors and flaws. 
  • Ekco Disaster Recovery also offers data encryption even in-transit to ensure that your data is protected.  

Editorial comments: With Ekco Disaster Recovery, you can access an IT specialist engineer who will help deploy and manage the disaster recovery plan. However, it does not offer any free trials. 

Pricing: No free trial and no word on pricing.

5. Microsoft Azure Site Recovery

Overview: Microsoft Azure Site Recovery is reliable, easy to deploy, and is designed for companies of all sizes. More importantly, it is cost-effective, making it more appealing for small and medium enterprises. 

Features: 

• • Microsoft Azure Site Recovery is known to provide better results if you are already using Microsoft Stack.
  • It allows you to opt between an on-premises data center or the Azure cloud Opens a new window as secondary locations for your workloads. 
  • It provides support for both Linux and Windows.

Editorial comments: Microsoft Azure is easy to set up and supports Linux and Windows on both physical servers and virtual machines. However, its failover is a manual process. Users should note that their recovery functions can be complicated and may require IT skills. 

Pricing: Free for the first month, then $16/month per instance protected.

Also Read: 7 Ways to Build an Effective Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plan

6. Quorum onQ

Overview: Quorum onQ offers several products in backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity. It comes with several features to appeal to all kinds of businesses. 

Features: 

• • Quorum onQ has a simple and user-friendly interface.
  • It comes with a customizable console making it easy to manage.
  • Quorum onQ is a flexible backup solution offering several options for multi-site failover. 
  • It comes with the capability to store virtual machines.

Editorial comments: Quorum offers several deployment scenarios; it is scalable and easy to use. But users should note that Quorum onQ has limited reporting. 

Pricing: The starting price is $750 per month and includes the Quorum onQ-T20 appliance. 

7. Veeam 

Overview: A comprehensive disaster recovery solution, Veeam’s backup, and disaster recovery software can be customized to address the unique needs of large and small, and medium-sized businesses. 

Features:

• • Veeam supports Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL, and Microsoft SharePoint. 
  • It offers recovery for physical, virtual, and cloud-based data.
  • Veeam features can be tailored to meet the particular requirements of the enterprise. 
  • It offers ease-of-use with a single management console. 
  • It provides enhanced security with encryption. 

Editorial comments: Veeam is known to be compatible with different software. It provides end-to-end encryption that can be tailored to the enterprises’ particular needs. However, users should note that reporting systems may require third-party tools.

Pricing: Veeam Backup and Replication Standard starts from $42.50 per VM per year.

8. Zerto Virtual Replication 

Overview: Zerto Virtual Replication is designed to address the needs of a large organization. With more than average prices, Zerto Virtual Replication is not suitable for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Features: 

• • Zerto supports several cloud options.  
  • Zerto Virtual Replication is known to be flexible and scalable. 
  • It offers a single platform for data protection and recovery across multi-cloud environments. 
  • It allows the user to monitor multiple sites on the go on mobile devices. 

Editorial comments: Zerto converts between VMware, Hyper-V, and AWS. However, it does not secure non-virtualized resources, and users should note that it can be challenging to configure supporting infrastructure.

Pricing: Starts at $745 per year.

Also Read: What Is Password Management? Definition, Components and Best Practices

Takeaway

Data consumption has grown dramatically over the last few years. Combine this with the growing digital transformation of businesses, and it is clear that the backup of your data alone is not going to be enough. Cloud-based disaster recovery is an ideal solution to continuously replicate your data to be available if there is a business disruption. Comprehensive disaster recovery planning can go a long way in minimizing the damage and in maintaining business continuity. 

No organization, big or small, is safe from a disaster. The consequences of a disaster event can range from significant financial to reputation loss. In some cases, it becomes exceedingly tough to bounce back from such an event. It is then crucial to opt for a disaster recovery software that will ensure business continuity and not let you down in the event of a disaster. 

Did you find this article helpful? Comment below or let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!