Thursday, 13 August 2015 Blog ehdf

Why Managed Backup Service is a Better Option for your Business?

According to research by BT and the Institute of Directors (IoD), only 20% of small businesses backup their data remotely, even though 82% admit they could not function without it. Yet, despite the vital importance of data, only 11% of the 394 companies surveyed, include data backup as one of their biggest IT priorities.

Tape and CD have been the most traditional way to backup data, but this method has many disadvantages. Firstly, because backup is on site, companies are more vulnerable to disasters. Secondly, they must rely on staff to initiate the process, and finally, small business owners have limited technological knowledge, yet they still carry the full weight of responsibility for their IT systems.

Managed backup services

An alternative solution to a self-managed tape-based backup process and one that takes advantages of a disk-based system is to look at a third party managed backup service. With managed back up service, a company still controls the data backup policy i.e. what can be backed up and when, but doesn’t need to have a member of staff standing around waiting for same.

Latest managed backup services allow users to automate their processes and store copies of their data easily and remotely. This means that backup is never forgotten and that data can be retrieved from any location should there be a problem.

Advantages of Managed backup services

1. Automated: Backups can be scheduled to run unattended at a particular time or frequency

2. Secure: Data is encrypted before leaving the device and remains so until recovered

3. High availability: Service providers store two copies of data—the local copy ensures faster recovery and the remote copy provides redundancy

4. Peace of mind: With backup as a service, companies can offload mundane backup management activities and get rid of the headaches of monitoring backup jobs

5. Flexibility: Most service providers offer pay per GB model, allowing companies to scale as their data grows and provides predictable costs and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

Data complexity and storage requirements, along with the recent focus on corporate governance requirements, has forced many organisations to re-look at their data protection strategies. Many have considered outsourcing as the best option and some of the top reasons for such an approach include:

1. Cost reduction

2. Maintaining focus on running the business

3. Gaining access to special expertise

4. Relieving resource constraints

5. Diminishing risk

6. Improving stability