Are you flirting with disaster?

by Sameer Sule

For those of you who may never have experienced a major disaster and/or interruption in your business and hence might not have thought about Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) solutions, consider this…

According to SCORE: Counselors to America’s Small Businesses:

“A Company that experiences a computer outage lasting more than 10 days will never fully recover financially. 50 percent will be out of business within five years.”

• 70 percent of small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year.

• Companies that aren’t able to resume operations within ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive.

• Of those businesses that experience a disaster and have no emergency plan, 43 percent never reopen; of those that do reopen, only 29 percent are still operating two years later.

What would happen to your business in the event of an unforeseen disaster? How do you recover from such an event? What steps have you taken in order to ensure that your business continues to operate efficiently when faced with these types of scenarios? These are critical questions that need to be addressed to ensure business continuity. Not having a BDR solution is certainly not worth the risk of losing your business, and implementing a well thought out BDR strategy should be a top priority.

Consider these six questions before implementing a BDR solution:

1. How long can your business run without critical data available to your employees, clients, partners etc?
2. What data is extremely important to your company in order to get back up and running after an unforeseen disruptive event?
3. What type of backup solution (local/ offsite cloud based) do you need to adequately address your needs?
4. What level of data backup (individual files, whole image) do you need and how frequently does the data need to be backed up?
5. Which desktops/laptops/mobile devices need to be backed up?
6. Which BDR vendors provide the appropriate solution that fit your needs and what are the pros and cons of each offering?

There are a number of vendors that sell BDR solutions, both on premise and cloud-based, each with their own unique value proposition.  Ultimately you should go with the solution that addresses all your concerns and meets the requirements of your business. You do not want to wait until a disaster strikes to implement a BDR solution. By then it is usually too late!

Author: Sameer Sule is the VP of Business Development, for Domitek LLC. He focuses on business opportunities in the Managed Services and Cloud Computing arena and helping his clients use technology to be more successful and efficient. He can be reached at ssule@domitek.net