Why every MSP should invest in a disaster recovery solution?

As a managed service provider (MSP), you offer your clients a variety of IT resources to remotely manage part or all of their IT infrastructures, which can include managing their operating systems, applications, databases, networks, endpoints, as well as ensuring security, compliance, and backup. Many organizations will buy your services because it is a less expensive option or, more importantly, because you bring the right tools, expertise, and best practices to support more complex, mission-critical IT functions.

Disaster recovery is a new challenge that organizations must understand and address. Defining recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) and putting processes in place to achieve these objectives can be a daunting task. This is why you should add disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) to your product portfolio. Currently, 36% of businesses use DRaaS and that number is expected to rise to 58% this year – creating opportunities for MSPs.

With DRaaS, your client does not need to invest in the hardware and software, nor IT expertise to develop, test, and execute an in-house DR strategy. Instead, your organization provides the services to replicate your client’s systems and data to a cloud infrastructure and orchestrate the failover and failback process.

Since the switch to remote work in 2020, only 45% of businesses believe they have adequate funds to prepare for a cyberattack – which is only one type of disaster – and only 39% indicate their staff has the expertise to properly defend against attackers. DRaaS offers an inexpensive and sure-fire way for businesses to protect their data.

As a disaster recovery solution provider, you can protect your client’s workload, limit downtime, and shorten Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) when a disaster happens. But consider the benefits your organization can realize as a DRaaS provider.

Offering more services to your clients means realizing additional revenues and improving your average revenue per user.

MSPs that have expanded their services to include DR have seen an 80% increase in their revenues when compared to offering a backup service alone.

You already provide managed backup services to your clients. DRaaS is the next logical step.. In fact, you are 60-70% more likely to sell to an existing client, compared to the 5-20% likelihood of selling to a new prospect. That means if you are not cross-selling and upselling disaster recovery, you are leaving money on the table. 

If you are not offering a DRaaS solution to your clients, they will go elsewhere. No business is interested in engaging one MSP for backup and a separate MSP for DRaaS. To keep your customers – and capture new customers – you need to provide end-to-end data protection services, which includes both backup and disaster recovery. 

If realizing incremental revenues and increasing client retention aren’t enough to consider adding DRaaS to your services portfolio, consider this - without a DR offering, you lose competitive advantage. You need to enrich your services portfolio and without a DRaaS offering, your organization cannot compete. 

You may be thinking if you add DRaaS to your product portfolio, you are adding another stand-alone service, which requires your team to manage another application and interface. The good news is: there is a modern data protection solution specifically built for MSPs, that delivers integrated cyber protection – including backup and disaster recovery – to meet all of your clients’ needs using a single web-based management console. 

Acronis offers a disaster recovery solution as part of the Acronis Cyber Cloud, which can protect your client’s workloads. When disaster strikes, you can instantly spin up systems in the Acronis Cloud and restore your client’s systems and data anywhere. Achieve your guaranteed RPO and RTO SLAs – in less than 15 minutes*.

If you are already an Acronis Cyber Backup Cloud services provider, you can simply add Acronis Cyber Disaster Recovery Cloud to ensure your client’s data is immediately available when a disaster happens. There is nothing else to install and no additional hardware required. In addition, your team does not need to add, learn, or manage another platform or vendor. DR is one part of a complete cyber protection platform that requires a single user interface.

As a DRaaS provider, Acronis Cyber Disaster Recovery Cloud strategically strengthens your data protection offerings. You can offer your clients peace of mind knowing that their data is protected and you can keep their business running with minimal downtime – no matter what kind of disaster strikes.