As more enterprises are relying on technology to support their business continuity planning, the cloud has taken a front seat in new investments. According to a report by Infiniti research, global Infrastructure-as-a-Service investments have been on the rise, and are expected to continue growing at a CAGR of 42.91 percent over the next five years. IaaS helps companies enable a digital hot site, as well as quick migration to remote platforms and accessibility when the firm faces a disaster.

Recently, Gartner investigated the growing adoption of cloud platforms, focusing on Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and IaaS. The research firm found that 44 percent of companies have been increasing investments into these cloud-based services primarily for cost savings. However, these savings don't only exist in day-to-day operations, but also when a disaster strikes and a business has to recovery quickly. The cost of a data disaster is rapidly expanding, and cloud strategies are helping firms mitigate expenses.

"The most commonly cited reasons the survey found for deploying SaaS were for development and testing production/mission-critical workloads. We've seen a real transition from use cases in previous surveys where early SaaS adoption focused on smaller pilot projects. Today, the projects are mission-critical and production grade." Gartner's Vice President of research, Joanne Correria, noted. "This is an affirmation that more businesses are comfortable with cloud deployments beyond the front office running sales force automation and email."

By using the cloud to better manage disaster recovery costs and continuity of operations planning, enterprises can streamline these efforts and ensure a stable work environment regardless of any potential crises they might face in the future.

In order to ensure proper implementation of any new strategy for disaster recovery, consider hiring business continuity consultants to make sure every angle is taken care of and every potential crisis prepared for.