D isaster recovery is an organization’s method of regaining access and functionality to its IT infrastructure after events like a natural disaster, cyber attack, or even business disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A variety of disaster recovery (DR) methods can be part of a disaster recovery plan. DR is one aspect of business continuity. Every organization should have a solid business recovery plan to stay in the competitive market. Otherwise damage on the IT infrastructure can cause irreversible damage to the name of the business. While developing a recovery plan following elements are the prominent areas that should be focused. Disaster recovery team: This assigned group of specialists will be responsible for creating, implementing and managing the disaster recovery plan. Risk evaluation: Assess potential hazards that put our organization at risk. Business-critical asset identification: Documentation of which systems, applications, data, and other resources are most critical for business continuity, as well as the necessary steps to recover data. Backups: Determine what needs backup (or to be relocated), who should perform backups, and how backups will be implemented. Include a recovery point objective (RPO) that states the frequency of backups and a recovery time objective (RTO) that defines the maximum amount of downtime allowable after a disaster. These metrics create limits to guide the choice of IT strategy, processes and procedures that make up an organization’s disaster recovery plan. The amount of downtime an organization can handle and how frequently the organization backs up its data will inform the disaster recovery strategy. Testing and optimization: The recovery team should continually test and update its strategy to address ever-evolving threats and business needs. Now let’s focus on the disaster recovery specified to AWS. Aws infrastructure is matured in handling the possibilities of disasters. How every AWS is following a shared responsibility model where pat of the responsibility is delegated to the customers as well. Following diagrams describes that properly. Types of Disaster Recovery Below pointed out the different types of disaster recovery methods. The implementation cost increases as the number increases. Back-up : Simplest type of disaster recovery. But backing up data provides only minimal business continuity help, as the IT infrastructure itself is not backed up. Cold Site : In this type of disaster recovery, an organization sets up a basic infrastructure in a second, rarely used facility that provides a place for employees to work after a natural disaster or fire. It can help with business continuity because business operations can continue, but it does not provide a way to protect or recover important data, so a cold site must be combined with other methods of disaster recovery. Hot Site :A hot site maintains up-to-date copies of data at all times. Hot sites are time-consuming to set up and more expensive than cold sites, but they dramatically reduce down time. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): In the event of a disaster or ransomware attack, a DRaaS provider moves an organization’s computer processing to its own cloud infrastructure, allowing a business to continue operations seamlessly from the vendor’s location, even if an organization’s servers are down. DRaaS plans are available through either subscription or pay-per-use models. There are pros and cons to choosing a local DRaaS provider: latency will be lower after transferring to DRaaS servers that are closer to an organization’s location, but in the event of a widespread natural disaster, a DRaaS that is nearby may be affected by the same disaster. Back Up as a Service: Similar to backing up data at a remote location, with Back Up as a Service, a third party provider backs up an organization’s data, but not its IT infrastructure. Datacenter disaster recovery: The physical elements of a data center can protect data and contribute to faster disaster recovery in certain types of disasters. For instance, fire suppression tools will help data and computer equipment survive a fire. A backup power source will help businesses sail through power outages without grinding operations to a halt. Of course, none of these physical disaster recovery tools will help in the event of a cyber attack. Virtualization: Organizations can back up certain operations and data or even a working replica of an organization’s entire computing environment on off-site virtual machines that are unaffected by physical disasters. Using virtualization as part of a disaster recovery plan also allows businesses to automate some disaster recovery processes, bringing everything back online faster. For virtualization to be an effective disaster recovery tool, frequent transfer of data and workloads is essential, as is good communication within the IT team about how many virtual machines are operating within an organization. Point-in-time copies: Point-in-time copies, also known as point-in-time snapshots, make a copy of the entire database at a given time. Instant recovery: Instant recovery is similar to point-in-time copies, except that instead of copying a database, instant recovery takes a snapshot of an entire virtual machine. Out of the above mentioned disaster recovery types it would be hard to identify how to select specific types for a specific component. To make that decision the above graph is used. Note that the “Cost of business impact curve” is relevant to the business while “Recovery cost” curve illustrates the implementation cost for different strategies. The management should decide how much of a budget they can allocate to the infrastructure which directly describes the cost of business impact they should be ready to face in case of a disaster. Backing Up Aws Services Different aws services provide different strategies to manage disasters. We have pointed out the prominent AWS services and their methologies AWS Service Method To back up DynamoDb On-demand Backup and Restore Point-in-time-recovery S3 ●S3 cross region replication ●Versioning App Config Adding Yaml to corresponding repository Lambda 1. Backup & Restore It consists of maintaining a backup of AWS Lambda functions so that you can restore them in another region in the event of a disaster. Keep the source code and settings of your functions under the management of a

Recession in Startups on Revenue What a downturn in the economy would mean for revenue based startups L ast year, revenue-based financing providers received millions of dollars from venture capitalists for their alternative financing, known as “founder friendly”. Having said that, do you believe that they still will be your friend with the increased lending risk? Let’s get into more details. Revenue-based financing providers provide e-commerce and SaaS startups with an alternative to VC funding. They have become popular in recent years. Since 2017, 18 RBF providers have emerged in Europe, raising a total of $671 million from venture capitalists. However, as we can see, lending to startups is about to become much riskier. RBF providers are vulnerable to interest rate fluctuations and rely on their clients’ strong revenues. That results in suffering if their lending portfolio suffers. Layoffs have begun in the sector and players who are small in scale have stopped lending entirely. Larger RBF firms have stated that they are looking for acquisitions due to the fall in valuations. Most of them were at the top of the credit cycle, making it easier for them to get credit and spread more esoteric forms of financing. But once the tide goes out and hits on recession, what they will have to see is a lot of lenders swimming without trunks. So, the unavoidable question arises again. How did they build a portfolio with such a high default rate? The Risk The revenue-based financing business model, which was offering companies a loan upfront, to be repaid as a percentage of future monthly revenues had been working well during 2020. But that was when the SaaS startup market was worth $145 billion and annual revenue had increased by 78% on average. You must admit that it is a riskier venture than traditional secured loans. The main reason would be that the traditional loans are backed up by assets such as collateral if the debtor fails to repay the loan. If the client default, RBF providers lack such collateral. As we all have heard, when the credit cycle is at its peak, it’s easier to get credit and do whatever type of lending you desire. According to the experts, when there is a hint of a crisis, unsecured credit creates trouble always because there is nothing to back it up. They have further stated that when that happens, you will have to see your clients’ revenues no longer be guaranteed, and you have no assurance they will pay you back. Risk Management Forward Partners, a London-listed venture capital firm, released its 2021 annual results last week, including those of its RBF arm, Forward Advances. Total write-offs at Forward Advances had reached 8.4 percent of its 2021 cohort of loans, owing primarily to defaults on three unnamed accounts. It attributed the high level of write-offs to its rapid growth and stated that it had put mitigations in place to reduce write-off risk going forward. This includes strengthening its technology, utilizing new data sources, and implementing additional governance measures. Most RBF providers say that the defaults are not yet exceeding forecasts. But reports are saying that they are monitoring the situation closely. Nobody can blame them as the macroeconomic situation changes. Some of the RBF providers have stated that the default rates are decreasing. So, it might be an advantage of having more historical data on companies and the market. Because that makes it easier to determine which clients are at risk. It’s time to Reconsider! Clearco, the best-funded RBF startup active in Europe, based in Canada, has been impacted by the market downturn. It had to lay off 10% of its employees at its European headquarters in Dublin in June, just two months after announcing 125 new jobs there. Likewise, most of the top, best-funded European-based players in the market, had laid off considerable percentages of their staff during the past few months. It has been said that the RBF model has turned them off because companies that use it do so due to a lack of alternatives. That will result in a lot of adverse selection, becoming quite unstuck with a recession. Higher interest rates are to be said to make the model much more difficult to extract value from the players. That will be the reason for a rise in liabilities. That ends up in maintaining their balance sheets in a more expensive process. It is no doubt that most RBF providers are having difficulty raising enough funds to make loans. According to investors, small-scale players have already stopped lending entirely due to a lack of capital. Those who have recently raised funds are looking to acquire smaller, less valuable competitors. We don’t have to mention this because you must already know that Outfund has bought Clicfunds in Spain last year to enter the Spanish market. Levenue has bought Requr in Amsterdam in January. Outfund’s founder has stated last month that the company was acquiring a smaller German competitor. Diversification of one’s Portfolio RBF startups typically lend to businesses with recurring revenue, such as e-commerce or software-as-a-service (SaaS). It is going to be risky to have a narrow portfolio focus with consumer spending on the decline and startups cutting back. Because retail and SMEs are closest to the epicenter of the economic crisis, some of these companies will shift their sector strategy to other sectors. But that is only an assumption. With a lending portfolio that is primarily comprised of e-commerce companies and SME retail, some companies say that it is better when the clientele is more diverse. But most of them have a half-SaaS or entirely SaaS lending portfolio. If we are to provide you with an example, Silvr, which has raised $20.6 million in Series A funding in February, had already spread its risk across both categories. It invests 80 percent of its funds in e-commerce and SaaS companies, with the remaining 20 percent going to mobile applications. Most of Europe’s RBF providers’ loans are designed to

Challenges and Solutions in Scaling a Software Development Team W hen your company is growing and all things are going well, it means that it’s time to increase the capacity or simply add another field to the existing scope. Scaling your software development team would do it. As we all know, hiring more people or establishing an extra department can assist you in covering new tasks. Of course, you may think that you have a well-defined process, experts on your side, and a detailed development strategy, so what could go wrong! But is it that simple? Scaling software teams, it turns out, frequently fail because of plenty of reasons. The list ranges from communication issues to innovating routine processes. But this does not mean that you shouldn’t do it. So, here we have brought you the main challenges of scaling a development team and outlined potential solutions. Management of Distributed Teams You know quite well how things can spiral out of control when you have entire distributed teams off-site if you have at least a few remote employees. Different locations, countries, and time zones will impact even the most well-planned communication strategy. Headquarters and development center are separated by hours while each office has its preferences for organizational tools and some contractors working flexible hours can be a nightmare. Changes are unavoidable when new teams are formed in different locations. You will have to replace face-to-face meetings with video conferences and digital analogs will have to be used instead of office whiteboards. You will have to bear up your team’s dissatisfied comments with the changes to their routine. Mainly because implementing new processes takes time and adapting to them takes more. What we suggest is to rethink your communication channels and devise a strategy that covers your distributed team. It should be convenient for your in-house staff at the same time as well. Of course, you surely do have employees from different time zones so to respond to emergencies occurring in them, you may need to change some people’s working hours or set alerts. Product Architecture The product architecture is sometimes incompatible with the scaling software development team. For that issue, we recommend you study “Conway’s Law” a little bit. It is an empirical law that elaborates on the difficulties of project structure against the organizational structure. Because we all know, product architecture reflects the structure of your company. If your software development team would have to be scaled, go for a plan that would be the best fit for you. For that, you’ll need a software architect. Project Management As the size of the software team grows, project management can be quite troublesome. Larger projects and complex tasks always require dedicated teams so they must be divided into smaller parts and distributed to different people. There are few solutions, but we think it would be better to focus on a product or specific functionality, a feature, or even a platform paradigm instead of forming scaling software teams based on technology. This ensures team specialization for faster and more qualified development. The dedicated team model can be recommended as the best for separate long-term projects. Such teams are accountable, balanced, and flexible with always changing requirements. In terms of task management, shortening sprints ensures quick response and a sense of regular progress. Shorter beats are longer in this context. We recommend you maintain a full backlog and assign a responsible person to each task. Effective and user-friendly reporting tools are the best way to accomplish this. The CI/CD and Scalability Typically, a one- or two-team company begins with open-source tools to build Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery pipelines. Chances are higher than the initial proof-of-concept to not be scalable consistently and effectively. When the number of teams increases, the number of CI pipelines does the same. There will be a significant raising of concerns about team communication and environment provisioning. We believe that adequate DevOps implementation may prevent development team scaling issues. ➢ You should approach infrastructure as code. That allows for adding new infrastructure for each new project at any time. ➢ Using containers to isolate individual pieces of software from the overall IT infrastructure would do wonders in managing application pieces more efficiently, regardless of scale. ➢ Infrastructure automation tools must also integrate with CI/CD tools. ➢ Test automation is required. Maintaining Productivity and Quality You may think that scaling a software team implies that you will be able to complete more tasks faster and more effectively since have more people covering the scope. That is not a good guess, we can assure you! “Amdahl’s Law” shows that some tasks must be completed in a specific order, which limits the number of people who can work on them concurrently. The presence of more developers does not always mean the work done will be faster or better. We all know that communication and team synchronization can reduce productivity. It may result in feedback loops and missed bugs. A certain amount of time will be needed to fix them. The other teams will have to continue to work on workarounds while the problem remains. ➢ Choosing the right programming languages and tools can sometimes increase productivity and make team communication easier. ➢ Static coding or unit tests in a dynamic language may be beneficial. ➢ You will need to establish boundaries within each team that will operate, with fewer interconnected tasks. ➢ It would be better to examine the project architecture, programming language, tools, and team skills. ➢ Identify bottlenecks where productivity or quality may be suffering. ➢ Try dividing the internal system of a product and the team. ➢ Make changes visible to all team members by using effective communication channels. Manual Activities In software development, any manual activity is a bottleneck that worsens with scaling. Some manual tasks may become too difficult to handle as your software development team grows, or there may simply be too many of them. The first suspect is testing. Automation is not