Mention disaster recovery or business continuity and you’ll often get panicked looks about the cost.

Yet as I consider our own brush with disaster, here’s what strikes me most: Everything we had in place that assured our ability to function during the crisis and resume normal operations afterwards was not expensive.

There’s a myth out there that real disaster recovery will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. In fact, those figures couldn’t be further from the truth. Using Quest as a guide, a similar-sized business could expect the same capacity to restore operations for a few thousand dollars a month.

Certainly it’s true that our ability to respond is aided by our willingness to take disaster drilling seriously — and also because we keep our skills sharp aiding clients during a crisis. But from a purely infrastructure standpoint, any 150-200 person company can get the same capability for a lot less than most think.

Of course, if you opt to go it alone — buy the products, build and maintain the system — it could easily get expensive. But it doesn’t have to be. There are other options. What’s more, a managed service approach brings with it the expertise of people who do disaster recovery and business continuity every day.