If you’ve ever read any articles like “101 Things to Do with Old Curtain Rings”, you’ll know how creative people can get. Forbes.com recently ran an article that covered four alternative uses of disaster recovery preparations and tools.

So, not to be outdone, we’ve added four of our own about alternative uses of disaster recovery planning. That leaves 93 other alternative uses still to find. We’ll talk to the curtain ring people and see what ideas they might have, but in the meantime, here’s our list of options 1 to 8.

First, a recap on the suggestions from Forbes.com:

  1. Fast ransomware mitigation. Reverting to a recent, tested data backup has proven to be one of the more effective ways to combat ransomware. And data backups are of course part of any self-respecting DR plan.
  2. Application production testing. DR backup routines make recent production data available for example for cloud-based virtual machines. Spin up, test, spin down, you’re done.
  3. System upgrades. Also uses a cloud-based DR system to failover (deliberately) to the cloud, while you do the system upgrades you need on site. Then failback from the cloud to your on-premise systems.
  4. Migration to the cloud. With DR as a Service (DRaaS), you already have the tools to move your data to the cloud. Move, test, shut down your on-site deployment and live in the cloud happily ever after.

Now, it’s our turn:

  1. Business activity prioritisation. DR planning with standard metrics like RTO and RPO forces you to assign priorities and understand relative criticality of different business activities.
  2. Win new business. Show prospective customers how well thought-out your DR planning and management is, win confidence, sign contracts.
  3. Get departments communicating with each other. Even a simple DR table-top exercise involving representatives from different departments can help break down departmental barriers and silos.
  4. Those chunky DR action plans that are unlikely to be read beforehand, and even less likely to be consulted when disaster strikes? If you already printed them, you might recycle them as doorstops and bring a breath of fresh air into the workplace.

Any other you’d like to add? Drop us a line!