A solution is worthless if it cannot deliver service to its intended consumers. This is why business continuity and disaster recovery should always be included when architecting a cloud computing solution. Although the solution architect may exert minimal influence on a solution's operational deployment, the good solution architect considers the following key BCDR questions before presenting a recommended solution:

• Can the recommended cloud service provider deliver the required service elasticity if BCDR is invoked?
• Are any other CSPs capable of delivering all the required services under a similar SLA?
• Does the recommended CSP have available network bandwidth for timely replication of data?
• Will there be available bandwidth between the impacted user base and the BCDR locations?
• Are there any legal or licensing constraints that prohibit the data or functionality to be present in any CSP data center location?

Cloud solution disaster recovery options fit into three broad categories:

• On-premises data center uses a CSP to support BCDR requirements
• Cloud service consumer depends on the CSPs redundant infrastructure to support BCDR requirements
• The cloud service consumer moves from the primary CSP to a secondary CSP to support BCDR requirements

The cloud solution architect should recommend the most practical of these options as the BCDR path for any recommended cloud solution. The impact of a BCDR scenario on all critical risk elements should be considered as supporting data in consideration of the following planning factors:

• Enumeration of the importance and priority of data and critical organizational process assets
• The current locations of these assets
• Network bandwidth and transport cost between data assets and all relevant processing sites
• Actual and potential location of enterprise workforce and business partners
• Enumeration and prioritization of anticipated disaster events and scenarios
• Process for initiating BCDR activities for each anticipated event or scenario
• Return to normal process for each event or scenario