Today, businesses rely heavily on technology and infrastructure to deliver products and services. The architecture supporting these services is often vast and complex, from cloud solutions to physical data centers. However, while cloud solutions and hybrid infrastructures are growing in popularity, on-premise infrastructure remains crucial to many organizations’ IT strategies, especially for companies dealing with sensitive data, stringent regulatory requirements, or those seeking greater control over their systems.
Understanding the importance of on-premise resilience also requires recognizing the growing threats posed by natural and human-made disasters. From a natural disaster perspective, the average downtime cost for large organizations due to a disaster is $9,000 per minute. Moreover, depending on the company’s size, a single hour of downtime could cost a business over $1,000,000.
Building on-premise resilience involves establishing a robust framework that minimizes the risk of downtime, mitigates disruptions, and ensures fast recovery during a disaster. Achieving this requires attention to several key elements, each designed to address specific challenges associated with maintaining service continuity.
A Disaster Recovery plan (DR plan) is the cornerstone of on-premise resilience. It outlines organizations’ protocols, procedures, and tools for recovering critical systems and data after a disaster. A DR plan aims to minimize downtime, restore business operations quickly, and protect data from permanent loss.
Redundancy, a fundamental principle of on-premise resilience, provides a safety net for critical systems. By deploying redundant components such as servers, network connections, and power supplies, disruptions can be handled seamlessly without disrupting operations, providing a sense of stability and reassurance.
Continuous monitoring is one of the most effective ways to ensure on-premise resilience. By tracking the health of critical infrastructure in real time, organizations can quickly detect failures, anticipate issues, and take corrective action before they become major disruptions. Use tools like EuVantage® and SolarWinds to help provide organizations with real-time alerts, ensuring IT teams can respond to anomalies immediately. Incorporating AI and machine learning into monitoring solutions allows for predictive maintenance. Deloitte reported that predictive maintenance can result in a 5-15% reduction in facility downtime and a 5-20% increase in labor productivity.
When a disaster strikes an organization’s on-premise infrastructure, the ripple effect can extend beyond internal operations, deeply affecting customers, users, and stakeholders. For many businesses, especially those reliant on real-time systems or customer-facing services, service interruptions can lead to customer frustration, lost trust, and significant financial losses. Minimizing these impacts and swiftly restoring services is not just a technical challenge but a critical aspect of maintaining customer satisfaction, loyalty, and long-term viability.
Building a resilient on-premise infrastructure isn’t just about installing redundancy systems or backing up data—it’s about fostering a culture of continuous improvement and adopting a strategic, comprehensive approach to managing risk, ensuring service availability, and recovering swiftly from disruptions. Businesses must blend technology, processes, and people to create an environment capable of withstanding foreseeable disasters and unexpected threats.
A disaster recovery (DR) plan outlines the procedures for recovering critical systems, applications, and data after an unexpected event. Without a detailed, well-structured DR plan, recovery time can stretch to days or weeks, leading to prolonged downtime and severe operational disruption.
Effective monitoring is the bedrock of proactive disaster management. By continuously tracking the health of on-premise infrastructure, businesses can spot potential issues before they escalate into full-scale disasters. Moreover, modern automation tools can improve the speed and efficiency of disaster recovery efforts. Implement continuous monitoring and automate recovery procedures.
Disasters and disruptions, particularly cyberattacks, can expose weaknesses in security protocols. Therefore, strengthening cybersecurity measures is essential to prevent security breaches during disaster recovery efforts. Encrypt Data, take Backups and implement the Zero Trust Security Model.
Today, on-premise resilience is no longer a luxury—it is a fundamental requirement for any organization aiming to safeguard its operations, protect customer relationships, and ensure business continuity during crises. As businesses increasingly face a growing range of threats—from natural disasters and cyberattacks to system failures and human error—the ability to recover swiftly and minimize customer impact is essential.
Rajkumar Solomons is Chief Strategic Alliances - Solomons is a seasoned professional with over 22 years of experience in IT/ITeS, Telecom, BFSI, Education, Travel & Transportation Domain. He has a proven track record in Business Leadership, Digital Transformation and Acceleration, Consulting Practice Development, Digital Marketing and Cloud Channel Development. In his previous role, Solomons was the CEO of the Telecom Cloud Business in the MEA region for G7 CR and Director – Partner Marketing and Business Development at Microsoft before G7 CR. His Microsoft stint spanned over a decade, where he played an instrumental role in landing the global blueprint for the largest Cloud Channel. He has built strategic partnerships across Telcos, GSIs & MSPs to accelerate business transformation for customers. Prior to Microsoft, he has worked at KPMG, building IT Strategy and Cloud Consulting Practice amongst various other things. Solomons has an MBA in marketing and has a bachelor’s degree in engineering (Electronics).