NTT Raises the Roof on RaaS

Recovery as a Service (RaaS) is a relatively new term and it’s not one I’m sure we need. I mean, how many aaSes must we invent. The idea behind RaaS is to focus on those services based around recovery. But isn’t backup part of this process already? And isn’t storage confusing enough already? NTT likely doesn’t share my feelings and is proud that Gartner gave the company the best marks in its recent report “Critical Capabilities for Recovery as a Service.”

This reporter signed up to get the full report and find out exactly what Gartner had to say.

“The service delivery cloud is based on VMware's vCloud, and, although all VM formats are supported, most of the client systems running in production are VMware ESX-server-based. VM and related production data replications to the NTT Communications Enterprise Cloud are near real time. Hybrid configurations composed of activated VMs and colocated physical servers are also supported,” Gartner reasoned. “No formal RTO- and RPO-based service levels are supported, but a service delivery infrastructure availability level of 99.97 percent is formally committed. Typically, customers purchase a total amount of computing and storage resources required for their recovery environment, plus a monthly fee for each VM replicated. Customers can add additional resources in the portal for recovery testing, and failover and activated resources are billed to customers on a minute-by-minute basis.”

Despite the confusion over what is storage, what is backup, what is DR, what is Business Continuity, and how these all are or are not RaaS, this RaaS market is taking off. Gartner believes this is a $564 million market this year (relatively tiny in tech market terms) but is growing 21 percent a year and will do so over the next three years.

The NTT Cloud Recovery service has a distinct virtual flavor. “The service delivery cloud is based on VMware’s vCloud and all VM formats are supported. VM and related production data replications to the NTT Communications Enterprise Cloud are near real time. Hybrid configurations composed of activated VMs and colocated physical servers are also supported,” NTT said.