Backup and disaster recovery in the cloud

This is an easy one to implement and only needs network connectivity between the two environments and a software/appliance that can act like a storage gateway enabling tiered storage. This is becoming possible because of the fact network connectivity is growing in terms of speed and reducing in terms of cost. 

You might not know it, but you might already be a user of this case as a consumer. Take into account Google Drive backup for photos or iCloud from Apple. Both of these are standard examples of using the public cloud for the backup of the application, which in this case is the local data store on a mobile phone. 

For enterprises, the same principles apply, albeit a little differently. Most tiered storage providers now offer a public cloud as a tier (for archiving), and they would do it on VPN/MPLS links, rather than just sending the data over plain internet. 

AWS offers services such as Storage Gateway, S3, and Glacier, targeted towards this requirement specifically. Azure has services such as Azure Site Recovery (ASR) and there are several third-party solutions available to solving this use case.