“Time is money” – so says the old adage. We all know it’s true: In our increasingly fast-paced society, all of us seem to have less time than ever, along with more demands on the time we do have. Wasted time costs us dearly.

Consider what wasted time costs a small business – or for that matter, a large one. And consider that when an IT disaster strikes, time effectively stops. Employees are idled, production grinds to a halt, orders go unfilled, shipments go unsent, and vital communications hang in limbo. Time becomes money – money spent and lost – in a very real, immediate sense.

This is the first, foremost consideration when deciding on a backup or disaster recovery strategy. There are very few companies for whom a major data loss, security breach, or instance of system unavailability stands to be less than a catastrophic and costly event. We all hope that worst-case scenarios never happen, but the fact is that they do. When they do, you have to be ready to respond with the degree of speed and efficiency your business demands – and that’s why it pays to have a crystal-clear understanding of backup and disaster recovery options, and to understand the fundamental difference between the two.

At this stage, it’s pretty thoroughly understood that the safest, most effective backup and disaster recovery options are off-premises, cloud-based solutions. “BaaS” (Backup as a Service) and “DRaaS” (Disaster Recovery as a Service) are affordable, secure and effective enough at this point, to effectively preempt local solutions in all but a very few instances. Relative to the cloud, the cost and risk involved with maintaining high-volume on premises storage or a fully redundant in-house working environment simply doesn’t make sense.

Think about what happens when a data disaster strikes: You need to get access to your data and get up and running again as quickly as possible. Provided that your hardware and application infrastructure remains accessible and intact, BaaS solutions can serve your needs well – though they will still require a fair amount of time and effort for recovery to be accomplished. With a BaaS solution, your data is safely stored where you can get to it in the event of an emergency, but not necessarily in immediately workable form. If time is a serious consideration for you – or if your hardware and applications are inaccessible, such as in the case of a flood or fire – BaaS may not offer protection enough.

DRaaS is designed to deal with worst-of-worst-case scenarios. Even if your data is compromised and access to your hardware and applications is lost, a properly-configured DRaaS solution can have you up and running in no time. DRaaS creates a mirror not only of your data, but your entire operating environment – applications, servers, everything – available for nearly immediate access and use. When disaster strikes, a cloud-based virtual clone of your entire network can be remotely accessed and worked with in nearly-normal fashion. That can be the critical difference that keeps production, communications, fulfillment and other operations running smoothly, even in the worst of circumstances.

For companies that value time and money, DRaaS can be a lifesaver. For those who don’t consider it – or consider it soon enough – it can be the lifesaver they wish they’d had later on.