Article
Beyond Borders: Why Enterprises Are Rethinking Backup & DR in a Volatile World
Geopolitical instability doesn't send a memo before it disrupts your infrastructure. If your entire footprint sits in one hyperscaler region, you are one regional incident away from a continuity crisis.
Over the past few weeks, we've heard the same question from CIOs and infrastructure leads across industries: what's our Plan B if our primary cloud region becomes unreliable or inaccessible? It's the right question to ask, and it's one more organizations should have asked years ago.
Key takeaways
- 01
A single hyperscaler region is a single point of failure for business continuity.
- 02
A DR region far from your users adds latency that hurts replication windows and RTO/RPO targets.
- 03
Onam Cloud at Equinix Mumbai gives a low latency backup and DR path in India and APAC, without a multi quarter buildout.
- 04
Teams setting up DR in Mumbai are moving non regulated production workloads there too.
Why cross border DR stalls
On paper, spinning up a backup and disaster recovery environment in another geography sounds straightforward. In practice, most teams evaluating this today run into two blockers.
- Distance. EU regions offer political stability and data protection maturity, but for teams with a primary user base centered in Asia, the added latency can materially hurt application performance, replication windows, and RTO/RPO targets.
- Time. Setting up cross border DR from scratch (networking, interconnects, compliance mapping and testing) is a multi month exercise most teams don't have the runway for right now.
Speed and proximity matter just as much as resilience.
How the Equinix partnership changes the equation
Through our Equinix Mumbai facility, we've built infrastructure that gives enterprises a genuinely low latency path to a backup and DR environment in the India and APAC region, without the multi quarter buildout typically associated with cross cloud, cross region resilience projects. In practice, this means:
- Fast interconnects between your existing hyperscaler workloads and our Mumbai facility.
- A proven Equinix carrier neutral facility as the physical anchor.
- India and APAC data residency as a natural byproduct of the region.
From cold backup to active footprint
Here's a trend we didn't fully anticipate but are seeing more of every week: customers evaluating DR in Mumbai are also asking about moving non regulated production workloads here outright. The logic is straightforward. If you're already establishing low latency, high trust infrastructure in India for backup purposes, why not shift some non regulated production workloads here as well? It reduces blast radius, diversifies your infrastructure footprint, and doesn't require you to wait for a disaster to prove the setup works.
This isn't about abandoning your hyperscaler relationship. It's about building a genuinely resilient, multi region posture where India isn't just a cold backup destination but an active part of your infrastructure strategy.
A phased path, not a template
- Step 1
Sort your workloads
Decide which workloads need active replication and which need periodic backup.
- Step 2
Set realistic targets
Agree RTO/RPO targets that your interconnect topology can actually meet.
- Step 3
Start with backup and DR
Stand up the DR environment in Mumbai and prove it with failover tests.
- Step 4
Expand when ready
Optionally move non regulated production workloads into the region over time.
Every environment is different, and DR architecture should never be templated. Resilience isn't about predicting the next crisis. It's about making sure you're not defined by it.
Built on Onam Cloud
Keep reading
Start the conversation
Let's talk about whereyour infrastructureshould live.
Tell us about your workload, your compliance constraints, and where your users are, and we'll help you figure out the right shape.