It's not a matter of if, but rather a matter of when some level of technological disaster will affect your business.

Backup software has a reputation for being expensive, unnecessarily complicated, unreliable, and time consuming to manage, costing thousands of dollars and requiring highly qualified staff to manage. As a result, many businesses go without any backup strategy at all, leaving them vulnerable to data loss.

Data loss is a serious threat to the ongoing viability of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).  According to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington D.C., 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster.  And 50 percent of these same businesses filed for bankruptcy immediately.  How long could your business run without its data?

Statistics show 60% of businesses will fail if they lose their business data. We will help you make sure that doesn't happen to your business.

As much as 60% of corporate data resides unprotected on PC desktops and laptops.  We can help you make sure that data is stored centrally on a server where it can all be backed up.

Data losses can occur due to employee mistakes, software corruption, hardware failure, theft, malicious acts from a disgruntled employee or outsider, or disasters such as fire, floods, or earthquakes.

Although backup and disaster recovery are critical business concerns, many SMBs don't understand:

• Which data is critical to the ongoing viability of their business
• How to implement a backup and recovery strategy to best address their business needs

We can help you not only backup up data with a disaster preparation/recovery plan, but also a business continuity plan to allow your business to continue operating in the event of some disaster.

Three Levels of Data Loss/Disaster

Losses or disasters can happen in different ways and the type of protection needed is different for each type of loss.

1. Data Loss

Files or folders of data can be lost or corrupted due to employee mistakes (even something as simple as deleting the wrong file), software corrupting data, virus infections, hardware malfunctions, etc.

How frequently that data is backed up determines how much data will be lost when files/folders have to be restored.

Restoration of the files/folders from online storage, possibly even user self-service restore of previous versions of files, will allow your employees to be quickly productive again.

Restoration from a tape backup will require a systems engineer and will take longer.

2. Server Loss

If the server (or drive) holding the data fails or is stolen, the server (or drive) needs to be replaced.  How quickly can you replace a server?  If the exact model replacement server is not available, can an image of the operating system be restored or does it need to be installed and configured and all your applications installed and configured?  It can take several days to get a replacement server and even longer if the software has to be reinstalled before data can be restored.

Virtualizing the server from an image backup can be done in as little as 30 minutes so that your employees can start working while replacement hardware is obtained.  The ability to restore an image to dissimilar hardware is a key to speedy recovery when replacement hardware is obtained.

3. Business Site Loss

If your entire business site (or your server(s) and local backups) is lost due to theft, fire, or some other disaster, you might need some way for your business to continue to operate from some alternate site.  At the very least, you need to get to backup data that was stored off-site.

Backup data has to be stored off site (probably at least 100 miles from your site) so that it is not lost if the site (or local backup) is lost.  How frequently data is sent off-site determines how much data will be lost in this event.

Quickly returning backup data to your business or even the ability to remotely operate on that data will allow your business to get back to business.

Managed Care

IT Professional Services' managed care includes options for complete data protection, server protection, and business site protection,.

Professional Services

If you need assistance developing a data backup and disaster perparation/recovery plan or a business continuity plan, IT Professional Services can help. Call our help desk.