Once upon a time, it was expensive, cumbersome and tedious to create business continuity and backup and recovery plans for businesses. With the advent of virtualization and cloud computing, that’s no longer the case. Business leaders can no longer hide behind those convenient excuses for not preparing their companies for “any eventuality.”
Business continuity and disaster recovery aren’t solely about picking up and moving on after the worst happens. They’re about having plans in place that will allow you to continue doing business no matter what happens, a power outage, a disgruntled employee absconding with client lists or, yes, a natural disaster. Your mission-critical company data are safely stored on a remote server or in the cloud, ready and able to be recovered and used at a moment’s notice.
Lugging around external hard drives or buying extra servers and leasing space somewhere away from your office to store them in are no longer necessary for efficient data backup and recovery. If your company’s budget can support buying extra servers and space in which to store them, and you feel safer doing that, well that’s great. It means you can also afford to pay for additional people to maintain them and ensure that data are being properly backed up. But if your company’s budget can’t support that kind of expense, that’s okay, too, because it doesn’t have to.
Managed IT services providers (MSP) abound. They serve large enterprises, medium businesses, small businesses, even independent contractors. The business continuity and backup and recovery strategies they propose for their clients often come as part of an overall service package. They regularly check to make sure that your server(s) is being backed up properly and that the saved data can, if necessary, be recovered quickly and effectively. So, you don’t have to worry about any nasty surprises should the need to recover important company files that were destroyed in a natural disaster or stolen by an illustrious hacker ever arise. Virtualization makes getting your business up and running during a power outage quick and painless. It also facilitates working remotely in the event of fire, flood or any other type of destructive event.
Take the time to do some research and find a reliable, trustworthy MSP that specializes in working with companies the same size as yours and in the same industry. Talk about the pros and cons of virtualization and cloud computing and how one or both of these solutions could be integrated into an effective business continuity and/or disaster recovery plan.
Of course, you hope that your business will never be destroyed by fire or natural disaster, that your system never gets infiltrated by a hacker and that no employee ever walks off with valuable company files, but if such a thing did happen, wouldn’t you want to be prepared with a business continuity or disaster recovery plan that would ensure that you could keep doing business as usual and keep you and your employees productive?
Ernie Sherman is president of Fuelled Networks and can be reached at ernies@fuellednetworks.com or visit the Fuelled Networks website at www.fuellednetworks.com
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