Backup and Recovery

The most important asset belonging to any business is its information. With the increasing importance of information technology for the continuation of business critical functions, combined with a transition to an around-the-clock economy, the importance of protecting an organizations data and IT infrastructure in the event of a disruptive situation has become an increasing and more visible business priority in recent years.

Why Backups are necessary

It is absolutely critical that users understand that corruption happens, hard drives will fail, motherboards will short out, and mistakes will erase data. Good maintenance and technical skills may increase the time between errors, but in the end Murphy always wins and you will need your data backup.

Cost of Backup Solutions

What is important to stress it that having a regular data backup does not need to be a painful or expensive process. Modern technology has brought reliable and affordable backup systems within the reach of even a modest budget. Even though the question of which of these items are appropriate for your data backup needs and budget will depend on your particular circumstances, but the overall need for data backup is not.

True Cost of Having No Backup Solution

Almost as important as admiting it can happen to you, is recognizing the cost of data loss. Most people don't realize how much they have invested into the data on their hard drive. Forget about the obvious things like financial data (Receivables, Payables, and Tax Information), which we know would be disastrous to lose. Instead think about the man-hours re-installing the base software on your computer, reconfiguring your environment to suit your preferences again, losing your e-mail addresses, and Internet bookmarks. Without a full data backup, getting up and going again could easily cost you several days of productivity.. How much is your time worth to you. On the other hand, occasional full data backups, combined with nightly backups of key data, will often turn several days of lost productivity and weeks of reorganizing into an hour of restoring your disk image, and key data that may have changed since the last full backup.

Of companies that had a major loss of business data, 43% never reopen, 51% close within two years, and only 6% will survive long-term.[U.S. National Fire Protection Agency]

Disaster Recovery

A disaster recovery (DR) plan is often referred to as a business continuity plan. However, the difference between these two plans should not be confused. A DR plan is often characterised as being specifically for IT systems within one or more locations. A business continuity plan is an all encompassing corporate plan that describes all the processes and procedures put into place to ensure that all aspects of a business can resume and be recovered should a disruption occur.

It is estimated that most large companies spend between 2% and 4% of their IT budget on DR planning, with the aim of avoiding larger losses in the event that the business cannot continue to function due to loss of IT infrastructure and data.
Unfortunately, there is not a magic formula for developing a DR plan. Every business has unique needs due to different customers, geographic locations, applications etc. What others can withstand, your business may not, and vice versa. Your DR plan should be customised to meet the requirements of your business and the value that you place on your data and IT infrastructure.

Small companies often spend more time planning their company picnics than for an event that could put them out of business.[Katherine Heaviside - Epoch 5]

How Tiedata Can Help Your Business

We can perform a business impact analysis and risk assessment to help identify the real needs of your business and direct the creation of a DR plan. We can define what constitutes the different levels of a disaster, as different situations will likely invoke different procedures.
We can advise you of the most suitable technologies for Tape Backups, Disk to Disk copies, On-line and Off-Site solutions, System Replication solutions and Virtualisation technologies. We can help you to assess the most suitable and cost effective strategy that will protect your business.

40% of all SMBs will go out of business if they cannot get to their data in the first 24 hours after a crisis.[Gartner]

Computers

Networking

Software

Release 2.9.03.05