Many business owners have probably been through a situation where the city or area where their company is located was struck by a natural disaster that either damaged the building, or somehow temporarily halted business practices.
These types of disasters demonstrate how natural events can unexpectedly halt daily business activities, and potentially put companies out of business by destroying the IT infrastructure.
Although companies are helpless to prevent disasters from ravaging their location, they can avoid going out of business by retaining IT support and services for disaster recovery from a managed services provider.
Choosing the Correct Data Recovery Service Provider Compared to maintaining an offsite location for data storage, buying emergency hardware and maintaining it offsite, and staffing a team of recovery experts internally, hiring recovery services from a managed services provider will prove to be economical.
However, once a company discerns that a third party data recovery service is the prudent choice, the issue becomes which provider to choose.
Because the quality of a recovery plan is based on the quality of the services of which it is comprised, it makes sense to begin by identifying services that are essential to the recovery process.
For many companies, the following provisions are essential:

• Impact Risk and Analysis - Before a plan is developed, an analysis of the impact a disaster can have on a company, and the unique risks it poses, must be analyzed.
  The provider helps perform the analysis.
  
• Recovery Options Study- Different companies require unique recovery options.
  A managed services provider helps determine which options satisfy recovery needs and assists with implementing those chosen options in the recovery plan.
  
• Disaster Recovery Planning- Disaster recovery planning is a subset of business continuity planning that focuses on keeping the IT network functional.
  The IT support and services provider facilitates plans for data retrieval, hardware support, and helps test the plans.
  
• Business Continuity Planning- Business continuity planning is a five stage planning cycle (Analysis, solution design, implementation, testing and acceptance, and maintenance) that focuses on keeping a business functional under adverse circumstances.
  The provider assists with developing and testing the plan.
  
• Emergency Management - Emergency management is a strategic process that focuses on ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery goals are achieved.
  The provider helps establish the management process.
  
• DR/BCP Staffing - A disaster could leave companies without the staff it needs to perform Disaster Recovery (DR) or carry out the Business Continuity Plan (BCP).
  If this occurs, the provider supplies staff that helps facilitate disaster recovery or the business continuity plan.
  

These provisions are essential for helping companies assess the risks faced in the event of a disaster, conceive a plan to overcome the risks, and instituting the plan if the need arises.
Conclusion Disaster recovery planning is an important part of protecting a company against the financially devastating effects of a disaster such as an earthquake or a pandemic.
A managed services provider that offers IT support services for disaster recovery can help business owners protect their companies from these disasters.
In addition to offering the help described above, the provider may offer other features the customer finds valuable, such as:

• Systems management
• Managed security
• Storage services
• Monitoring services
• Networking services
• Replication services

Receiving the provisions mentioned above, as well as recovery services from the same provider, might aid in the recovery process, and make unique packages a possibility that will save the customer money.