Does Your Organization Have A Backup Of Your Data?

A sizable chunk of your business worth is defined by the data you own. This could include your customer list, proprietary product docs, income data, patent applications, and so on. A recent study showed that a shocking 58% of SMBs are not prepared for data loss. What’s more - nearly 60% of such organizations that lose their data tend to shut down within the first six months.

Creating a backup of your business data, either on your own server, or on the cloud is thus of paramount importance.

How Backup Services Help

The simplest way to create a backup of your business data is by copying information from your servers into a secondary server. This way, even if your primary server crashes or is compromised, you can still bring data back on from the secondary server.

There are however a few issues to consider here. A lot of business data is proprietary and it is important to not have multiple copies of this information. Doing so increases the cost of securing your data across multiple servers. Third party backup services help you create secure copies of such proprietary information without increasing the risks of them getting compromised.

It is of course, possible for businesses to create their own secure data backup infrastructure. This can however be extremely expensive and can cost businesses several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Using a dedicated third party backup service provider can ensure equally top class security while costing just about $4 to $10 a month.

How To Pick A Backup Service Provider

Data backup is just one of the many other functionalities that a business requires. It is a good idea to pick one service provider for all functionalities that require you to share proprietary data. When it comes to backups, it is a good idea to pick a service provider who also offers other functionalities like file transfer, remote access, team collaboration and content management. This way, you may ensure that your business data is shared with only a limited number of third party organizations. This limits the possibility of such information getting compromised.

Is Cloud Backup A Good Idea

One of the biggest advantages of having a cloud-based data backup solution is that it helps prevent or at least minimize downtime. Some studies estimate the cost of an hour of business downtime to anywhere between $300,000 to $400,000. With cloud backups, it is possible to bring your business back up online with just a matter of clicks. This heavily protects potential loss of business and more than pays for the investment in such technologies.

Another critical advantage that cloud backups offer is the ability to do away with IT Ops. A growing number of organizations are hosted completely online. Having a local server to backup your information in such cases can be both expensive and inefficient. Cloud based back up services only cost a few handful of dollars each month and is thus a lot more cheaper than deploying and maintaining a local server from scratch.

If you are an enterprise organization with an established local infrastructure maintained by an IT Ops team, it may make sense to go with a local server backup. A better alternative however would be to opt for a hybrid solution that creates a mix of local and cloud backup. This way, it is easy to ensure an efficient resumption of services during a downtime as well as ensure quick and easy file sharing and collaboration with your remote teams.

Does your organization have a data backup strategy? How did you go about picking the right service for your organization? Share your experience in the comments below.