The not so curious case of losing data
While research suggests that 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within six months, Dawie Bloomberg, MD of Green Apple IT warns SMEs, which often operate on tight budgets, of the critical importance of backing up their data.
As the business world becomes increasingly digitised and more and more critical business information is stored on computers, a backup and recovery strategy is a critical element of business continuity and sustainability.
This is not only important in large enterprises, but is critical for the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) market as well.
“While backup tends to be a low priority for this market, without it the consequences in the event of a disaster or data loss can be crippling,” Bloomberg said.
This is particularly relevant when considering that much of an SME’s data resides on PCs and portable devices such as notebooks, tablets and smartphones, he stresses.
While implementing a backup and recovery strategy may seem like a daunting task, evolving technology offers easy to use and cost effective backup solutions that automate this process, he added.
Research
According to Boston Computing, 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within six months of a disaster.
The Strategic Research Institute claims that 93% of companies that lost their data centre for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.
“This means that companies that are not able to recover their data and resume operations within a short period of time are unlikely to survive, making backup a critical component of business continuity and sustainability,” Bloomberg said.
While many SMEs are aware of the importance of backup, many are challenged by a limited budget, which is something that large corporates do not necessarily need to content with.
“As a result, although smaller businesses are aware of the need for backup, there seems to be a lack of urgency around implementing a proper strategy and solution.”
“However, when it comes to backup and recovery, the importance of having the right system in place only becomes clear when disaster strikes, and by then it is simply too late,” Bloomberg said.
Cloud
Increasingly, SMEs are turning to the cloud to provide effective, efficient and above all secure backup and recovery solutions.
As bandwidth has become more plentiful and more affordable, online backup solutions have gained popularity and offer a number of benefits, Green Apple IT says.
The cloud offers an easy and convenient option for backup that is always available when there is an Internet connection, and this process can be automated to remove the risk of human error and forgetfulness, Bloomberg notes.
The one downside of cloud backup, however, is that in the event that data needs to be recovered, it must be downloaded from the cloud storage, which can take some time depending on the size of files and can be bandwidth intensive.
Combining a hardware-based backup system, such as an external hard drive, with cloud storage and backup, provides the best of both worlds to ensure that data is always safe, secure and available in the event of a disaster, Green Apple IT offers.
By Dawie Bloomberg, MD of Green Apple IT
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