Disasters can strike at anytime, and you never know exactly how long they will disrupt your business or organization. In basic terms, there are two types of disasters that could damage your network and data systems: natural disasters and human error. There have been many documented cases of either of these situations causing serious (if not irreparable) harm.

We’re told again and again to backup our important data and make sure it is stored in a safe location. In fact, some concerned users actually got together and declared March 31st World BackUp Day. You may not have known this, and it may have passed you by this year, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take some time out of your day and look into (or establish) your plan for data storage and disaster recovery.

What Would Happen If…

What would you do if there was a fire in your office tomorrow? What about a flood? For that matter, what would you do if one of your more clumsy employees were to spill some coffee on the server? Any one of these situations could cause a lot of problems for a company, and yet according to the AFCOM State of the DATA Center report, 15% of the data centers in the study said they did not have a plan for data backup and recovery.

15% may not seem like a lot at first glance, but these are data centers. Their entire livelihood is based on the ability to provide safe and secure data storage and transfer solutions. If these companies haven’t taken the time to prepare for the unexpected, how many other businesses are going to be caught off guard when disaster strikes? History has shown us that most of those businesses will never bounce back after such a loss.

What Are the Options?

There are two basic options to manage your data onsite or online backups. Onsite options include manually backing up the information on various media like CDs, DVDs, or flash drives, while online options include all the cloud computing solutions for storing important data. The one you finally choose will depend on your individual situation.
Individuals and businesses that have small amounts of data or deal with email archiving on a regular basis often opt for the onsite option, mostly because this is something they have always done. The problem, though, is that if your business is hit by some natural disaster all those CDs and DVDs are going to go down with it. Online backup systems are providing a way for companies to get around this problem. Online backups are fast, easy, and can usually be automated to make sure it is done on a regular basis.

What Are the Benefits?

When you work with a reliable data center (one of the 85% that do have some kind of disaster recovery plan) to backup your information, you will be able to mitigate any of the losses that would otherwise result from a disaster. You will be able to save money as you rebuild and re-establish your company, and all that sensitive personal or company data will be safe and secure. You never know when a disaster will strike, so don’t wait for the next World BackUp Day before you start making preparations.

=== About the Author ===

This author writes about a range of technologies for large and medium business units which include cloud computing, servers and other infrastructure solutions. These products and services along with email archiving can reduce management costs and create a flexible infrastructure.