Backup & Disaster Recovery
by James Fields
On any given day, there are many unpredictable disasters that could strike your company. Most recently, there were earthquakes in Texas and snowstorms in the north surpassing record amounts of snowfall. When disasters strike, they affect power supply, the ability to get to work and a computer network’s ability to stay up and running. In many cases, it isn’t until after a disaster that companies realize how important it is to have a backup and disaster recovery plan.
A recent poll suggests that 38% of midmarket organizations said that improving their data backup and recovery is their top IT priority in the next 12 months. Is it yours?
A backup and disaster recovery plan should provide a complete assessment of your company’s framework, so you know what you are at risk of losing in the case of an emergency. The plan should put your company in a position to recovery quickly, efficiently and operate immediately following the disaster.
There are two angles to consider while protecting your company and they must work together:
- Backup, Disaster Recovery
- Securing backup of business data
- Recovering operations in a timely manner following a disaster
- Intelligent Business Continuity
- Maintaining network uptime during disaster
- Maintaining Critical operations during disaster
In May 2010, disaster struck Nashville with a devastating flood. According to the City of Nashville, 2,773 businesses were forced to close their doors – some were never able to recover and closed permanently, resulting in $3.6 billion lost revenue.
This statistic varies, but nearly 70% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are unable to recover and forced to shut down within one year.
A midsize company has 16-20 hours of network, system or application downtime per year, according to Gartner Group. What are the costs associated to downtime? Here are a few:
- All internal business processes will cease: billing, HR, intranet
- Lost sales revenue if the sales team doesn’t have access to client and product data
- Materials lost and cleanup costs
- Cost to restore IT systems
This can happen to you. You have business insurance for your office and your employees. Why would you not have the same protection for your business data? Odds are, you’ll use your backup and disaster recovery solution before you ever utilize your business insurance.
