My last posts MVaaS and Enterprise Hosted Video Compared and Managed Video as a Service Explained, introduced the difference between MVaaS and Enterprise Hosted Video as well as the common benefits they both provide. This is the fifth of 5 posts in a series about the differences. (The previous were MVaaS Total Cost of Ownership, Managing Video Software, MVaaS Network Complexity, Why would I share video outside my enterprise)

This final post is about disaster recovery. The general gist of this post is “do it yourself” versus “trust someone else”. In its simplest form, disaster planning is about backing up your data and systems in a robust fashion. By robust, I mean

• Back up data and systems somehow (either to a tape system or a separate disk system)
• Move backups off-site on a regular basis
• Use a highly available system that can survive single points of failure, preferably with geographic redundancy

The basic differentiator between enterprise hosted and MVaaS in this area is who does the work. Disaster recovery is a complex project that requires careful planning, attention to detail, and regular practice. A company who employees enterprise hosted video clearly can control their own destiny in this area. They can know their DR planning and processes 100%. Of course, this implies a fair amount of work and cost on the part of the enterprise IT staff.

The flip side is that with MVaaS, you can rely on the service provider to do this work for you. The service provider has the motivation and responsibility to support this for multiple customers, so it should be done well. The service provider also is more likely to invest in highly available systems such as redundant disk arrays, multiple power supplies, redundant network connections and the like.

However, at the end of the day, it comes down to do you trust your service provider to do the right thing compared to how likely you trust yourself to do the right thing.