Mexican hurricanes, Colorado flooding and a typhoon in southern China are only the most recent natural disasters to plague our planet. It is an unfortunate fact of life that disasters, both natural and man-made, are going to occur. And just as most organizations have a plan of action in place should their physical operations become compromised by a disaster, businesses are realizing the importance of securing their data and networking infrastructure.

But disaster recovery (DR) isn’t as simple as having an off-site backup location. Business continuity plays a major role in any type of DR plan, and being able to prioritize your data and applications to ensure timely access to the most sensitive information is crucial. And that is where the cloud comes into play as it offers a cost-effective, scalable and secure means of delivering DR and business continuity in a variety of configurations.

DR-as-a-Service (DRaaS) is growing in popularity as more and more organizations become comfortable with cloud deployments. In fact, Gartner (News - Alert) forecasts more than 30 percent of midsize companies will have adopted DR in the cloud by next year. The research firm has outlined four major benefits of using the cloud for DR, and the first one of course has to do with cost savings. Companies may reduce or even eliminate their recovery testing and exercising costs when they move to a DRaaS solution versus a traditional offering. Change skew – or the consistency among production data center infrastructure, applications and data, and their state at the time of last recovery – is also a factor. Gartner notes that VML-specific change skew is highly manageable and efficient.

Other factors and benefits include reduced complexity of recovery configuration startup and a better understanding of the necessary testing scope required. Gartner posits that organizations are more likely to use DRaaS to support more critical applications, and particularly those requiring short recovery times.

Savvis has been making a strong push in the cloud and managed services space, and the company has partnered with DataGardens to offer DRaaS, aimed at mid-sized organizations. The company’s SafeHaven cloud recovery solution has been integrated with Savvis Cloud to offer customers a variety of DR and business continuity benefits.

Savvis and DataGardens are hosting a six-part webinar series focusing on the cloud and cloud services. The first webinar, “Disaster Recovery in the Savvis Cloud,” will take place on Thursday at 11 a.m. EST. It is designed for business owners and IT professionals interested in DR and business continuity and will focus on the benefits and practical application of DR in the cloud.