BDR 101: Eat Your Own Dog Food, Says masterIT CEO

While some managed services providers (MSPs) boast about backup and disaster recovery (BDR) reliable enough for nuclear strikes, others eat their own dog food. Before I try to explain my way out of this one, let me shift gears to the man in charge who made the statement: MasterIT CEO Michael Drake. Here’s why.

Drake oversees an MSPmentor 200 North America company (part of the larger MSPmentor 501) that provides technology services for small to medium businesses, including network security, monitoring and management; business continuity and disaster recovery; on-site engineering support; financial and consulting services; and a 24/7 support desk. To assist its customers with BDR, masterIT conducts educational sessions with each of its customers to ensure that they do not become another “statistic.” He explains more in this MSPmentor exclusive.

Educating your clients on BDR is essential to any disaster recovery plan. To educate its customers about BDR, masterIT conducts an interactive three hour session, either at a customer’s location or in a group setting with other organizations.

What do the masterIT’s Business Continuity Workshops entail?
“We eat our own dog food,” Drake says, “part of our BC/DR practice is taking our clients through a 64-step process to create a SaaS BC/DR solution. It is a living document that can be launched in the event of a disruption or disaster,” he says. “Most people don’t realize that less than 15 percent of a certified BC/DR plan is about technology – the other 85 percent is about communication and logistics aimed at answering the question, ‘Not what would you do, but what would your clients do in the event of your disaster?'”

What challenges will BDR have in 2013?
Drake points to customers choosing a cheaper answer than selecting a solution. “The continual commoditization of storage and distinguishing our solution as part of our offer rather than the client trying to opt for one off cheap fixes rather than a solution,” Drake says. “We have so many clients to manage back up for today, we consider the protection of their data our number one priority – so we had to appoint dedicated resources to it from our centralized services team. Another challenge we have encountered is even with the number of natural disasters and publicized data loss, end clients often still feel it won’t happen to them.”

Testing BDR solutions over the years assisted masterIT with finding the right solution for the company. They dealt with companies being sold, resulting in a change in the relationship, service, and margins. Other vendors grew large in demand, but their quality of service diminished. Now, the company has the ability to deliver a full business continuity and disaster recovery solution as a component part of their core offer.

The company’s BDR software is a software as a service (Saas) solution, which enables the company to constantly update it, and allows clients to access it from any Internet connection. MasterIT’s software also includes templates and logical steps that will assist customers with developing BDR plans.