
Ask HN: What is your SaaS disaster recovery plan? - funfunfunction
My small startup is submitting an RFP response to a large organization that requires we have a disaster recovery plan. I&#x27;ve Googled around a bit and haven&#x27;t found anything that seems like a good example. I&#x27;m curious how the HN crowd deals with this sort of thing.<p>Any input is appreciated!
======
davismwfl
DR plans are a critical business component for larger companies to do business
with you, it is a checkbox type item they must check off. Essentially they are
looking to know that the business has planned for disasters and have a written
methodology to manage & mitigate it. You can find DR plans online to use for a
template, the key things you need to answer is where are there single points
of failure in your system and how do you mitigate them. And then where you
have redundancy how does it give you the ability to recover from or mitigate a
disaster.

The DR plan doesn't have to be crazy complicated or long, but companies know
there are deficiencies in your solution (they have them in their own), what
they are wanting to be able to check is that you recognize the deficiencies
and that you have thought about how to protect their data and their access to
the system.

~~~
funfunfunction
Thanks for the response. Can you provide an example of a template? I can't
find one that seems like it would cover everything I would think a company of
this size would be interested in.

~~~
davismwfl
I think you are overthinking things, making yourself more concerned than need
be. Big companies are checking boxes during the RFP process and want to make
sure you have thought through problems. No one can tell you everything you
need in your DR/BCP (disaster recovery/business continuity plan) without
understanding your solution and problem space.

[https://www.smartsheet.com/disaster-recovery-
templates](https://www.smartsheet.com/disaster-recovery-templates) . -- Has
lots of different templates to start from or get ideas from.

DR plans could be as simple as a couple of pages or as complex as a few
hundred (though I find those useless personally). Answer the key questions, if
you are using the cloud to host you are in luck because it simplifies things
drastically. If you are self-hosting on your own co-located servers, then you
are in for a bit more work. AWS and other clouds have products to assist you
and also have templates to help you answer key questions usually. again you
have to use what you need from it and customize it for your company though.

I am not trying to be a dick or anything and I hope it doesn't come across
this way, but the DR plan for a small SaaS company with one or two employees
will be drastically different then one with 100, 1000 or more employees. So
having no clue what you do, what your product does, or what size deal this is
it is hard to help point you to a specific template that might be more
helpful.

Just a note on the RFP process (if you don't already know).

RFP's can be awesome, or they can suck the life out of your company. If you
are answering an RFP for a < 5 figure/month deal it is almost always a losing
proposition. Most true enterprises will spend 100-250k without needing an RFP.
Government, or government agencies are different of course. But RFP's can take
you a few weeks to put together properly so you have to weigh the opportunity
against the cost to respond. Not saying don't do it just recognize and
evaluate the costs. I responded to some RFPs where they required you to be on-
site for the question/answer session or you would be disqualified, so now add
in air travel and hotel rooms, plus the RFP costs. Some of our RFP's were
really awesome and we spent a week putting an answer together and got a decent
deal out of it, others we took a month and spent $15-20k only to be told we
didn't qualify (when in reality the company already had their chosen vendor
and just had to check the RFP bid box), so just guard your time and money when
doing RFPs, and try to get a feel for the situation. And remember, probably a
good 50% of the RFP process for enterprises is box checking, and once you get
past that stage they'll be more open to working with you.

~~~
gtsteve
Alternative point of view: We went through the RFP process and failed to win
the job. However, we did tick all the boxes in terms of company structure,
security, processes, etc, which was helpful because another team in this
company contacted us and was delighted to find they didn't have to go through
a long process to buy our software.

> If you are answering an RFP for a < 5 figure/month deal it is almost always
> a losing proposition.

I was against going through the first RFP at all but it worked out in the end.
I don't necessarily disagree with this statement on face value but my
experience illustrates that sometimes playing the long game can work out for
you.

~~~
davismwfl
Yea, totally agree, it can work out at times.

One thing I almost always would try if I lost the RFP was to get put on the
approved vendors list. If you just try to get on the approved vendors list
many times it is very hard with a ton of hoops to jump through with no real
near term payoff. But if you answer an RFP and lose, ask to be put on the
approved vendors list, many times you can get it with little issue (I did that
a lot). What this does is minimizes friction for others in that company to
hire your company or purchase your products later on, which can be super
valuable.

------
glotgizmo
I always wondered if larger orgs have options to fallback to other cloud
providers? If AWS goes down, or part of AWS, are there automatic fallbacks to
azure for example?

