Modern midmarket IT teams face a convergence of challenges: rising ransomware frequency, increased dependency on critical systems, and higher expectations from leadership for resiliency. Backups alone rarely meet those expectations.

Backups restore data — they don’t restore operations.
Most organizations discover this during an outage:

• Restores are slow and manual
• Recovery points are too far apart
• Application dependencies are not documented
• Tests are irregular or incomplete
• Modern ransomware targets backup repositories, snapshots, and credentials

That’s why organizations are shifting from “backup‑only” strategies to comprehensive

Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) program.

Defining the Targets: RPO, RTO, and Business Criticality

Before improving recovery, IT leaders must define what successful recovery means for the business.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

RPO measures the amount of data, expressed in time, that a business can afford to lose during a disruption.

• RPO is directly tied to backup or replication frequency.
• Lower RPO requires more frequent snapshots, continuous replication, or journal‑based technologies.
• For most midmarket environments, achieving RPOs under ~1 hour requires significant investment and architectural changes.

This is fundamentally a data protection metric.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

RTO is the maximum allowable time to restore a system or business process after an incident.

This is where disaster recovery strategy matters:

• Infrastructure readiness.
• Application interdependency mapping.
• Runbooks and documented boot sequences.
• Recovery workflows.
• Testing cadence.
• Partner support structure.

RTO governs system downtime and guides the DR architecture.

Application Tiering

A simple structure improves clarity:

• Tier 1: Critical revenue‑impacting systems
• Tier 2: Systems that can tolerate short downtime
• Tier 3: Low‑impact or non‑urgent systems
  
  
  

Runbook Ownership

A DR plan fails when no one owns it.

Define:

• System owners
• Decision makers
• Escalation paths
• Test participants

A Practical DR Test Approach (Without Overpromising)

A 90‑minute DR test can validate preparedness, but true failovers require planning and may not be feasible for every environment. Midmarket organizations often rely on:

• Non‑disruptive failover testing where supported
• Application‑level verification
• Journal and replication health checks
• Runbook walkthroughs

Failing over into isolated networks is possible in some environments, but:

• It is not universally practical
• It requires significant design considerations
• Many customers do not have this capability implemented today

A realistic DR test includes:

Step 1 – Validate Protection
Confirm backups, replication checkpoints, journal history, and data integrity.

Step 2 – Begin a Non‑Disruptive Test (When Supported)
Initiate test recovery without impacting production.

Step 3 – Boot Systems & Validate Dependencies
Confirm systems come online in the correct order and applications can authenticate.

Step 4 – Functional Verification
System owners confirm key workflows.

Step 5 – Document Findings
RTO/RPO validation, gaps, and next steps.

What Midmarket Teams Actually Need from DRaaS

On‑Prem DR

Pros: Full control
Cons: Duplicate hardware, local-disaster risk, manual recovery

Cloud‑Based DR (DIY)

Pros: Flexible
Cons: Complex, unpredictable costs, slow if not optimized

Fully Managed DRaaS

Pros:

• Predictable RTO/RPO
• Frequent testing
• No duplicate hardware
• Modern ransomware‑resilient architecture

Cons:

• Requires a partner with mature runbooks and operational discipline

Reporting That Matters to Executives

• Cost of downtime.
• System tiering and business impact.
• RTO/RPO verification.
• Immutable recovery journaling.
• Compliance‑ready audit logs.

Clarifying Ransomware Recovery Expectations

Ransomware recovery is never instantaneous.

Even with strong RPO/RTO posture, ransomware response includes:

• Forensic validation
• Credential resets
• Rehydration of clean systems
• Network segmentation
• Application‑level and identity‑level remediation

This requires coordination across incident response, not just DR.

No modern environment can guarantee “recovery in minutes” from ransomware.
The goal is minimizing data loss and accelerating system restoration, not oversimplifying recovery.

Validate your DR posture with a structured, realistic 90 minute readiness review. Learn your true RTO/RPO and identify gaps.