Data Backup & Disaster Recovery Solutions

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) can sound similar in conversation but are two different essentials for successful businesses. Data backup is how you ensure that you have a copy of your data, while disaster recovery is much more than simply having a reliable backup copy. DR is the strategy put in place to continue or restore your core business functions quickly if it is ever compromised.

There are different techniques to disaster recovery and some can come with a large price tag, whereas others offer more affordable options that could potentially save your business and your customer reputation. If your backup strategy does not extend to disaster recovery, or vice versa, then your business may end up paying the price.

What is Data Backup & Disaster Recovery?

Data Backup is the duplication and storage of your data, for easy and quick retrieval in the event of hardware failure or data loss. Hardware failure is responsible for up to 45% of organisation downtime.

An effective data backup strategy can significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the downtime of your business. Users can access what they need on demand and rely on their data to be constantly available.

If your business relies on a billing platform or CRM to handle orders and interact with clients, then it is safe to say that when your hardware fails you will be unable to operate and make money. The average cost of downtime per hour sits at £4000+ and is rising. How many customers or sales would you lose during just one hour or day of downtime and how much would you be paying to staff an operation that is unable to run? Is that figure worth risking? Your current data backup, or lack thereof, could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Disaster Recovery provides you with the ability to backup and restore an entire machine’s data for use in the event of data corruption, natural disaster, theft and other emergency situations. You can restore data from before the disaster happened and continue work as normal. Disaster recovery is particularly helpful in the event of ransomware attacks, which are becoming more common each year.

Are you still backing up to tapes or discs? What would happen to your business if those tapes were lost, damaged, stolen or the person managing it couldn’t make it to work?

Think of data backup and disaster recovery as an insurance policy. We all invest in car insurance in case we have an accident and need to pay for an expensive repair, rental car, possibly a new car and because most of us can’t afford to be unable to get to work each day and earn our wages. Cloud backup is your insurance plan to protect your data from permanent damage.

We have home insurance in case our belongings get damaged or stolen and some of those belongings can’t be replaced, or may have belonged to another person who expected a certain level of protection when trusting us with these items. Similarly, without data recovery plans in place you can lose data, miss out on sales and have to tackle a potentially very expensive server repair on your own.

Having an automatic backup system protects you from issues that would harm you now, including:

• Human error
• Data misplacement
• Cost of replacing tapes, discs and unit
• Running out of storage
• Data holder absence
• Data breaches

Along with removing your problems when bearing full responsibility, you will also benefit from:

• Having one less thing to worry about
• Relying less on your internal hardware and infrastructure
• Higher security
• Easy access platforms
• Saving valuable time