Sink or Swim - Business Continuity Relies on Solid Backup

Sit back in your chair and take a look around your business. Your employees are helping customers from all over the Northern Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC region and beyond. Your mailbox is full of letters and packages from all around the globe, and your presence on the world wide web is literally connecting you all over the world. The complex coordination of people and resources you see in front of you is called logistics.

Behind the complexity of logistics there is a plan, mentality, and methodology driving the machine of business forward, this is known as a business continuity plan. The strongest growth happens intentionally from a well thought out continuity plan, and the more effort you invest into your continuity plan, the more prepared you will be for the ebbs and flows of an unpredictable economy.

Data is a vital component that makes everything work. Picture your continuity plan like the blueprint for the logistic machine, and your data and information as the fuel that keeps the machine running. If you experience a sudden loss in data without a backup solution, the entire machine can come to a screeching halt.

We cannot stress the importance of backing up your data enough, yet only 60% of businesses do it! This leaves 40% of small-to-medium sized businesses unprotected, according to a study by The Diffusion Group. Data loss won't just slow down the engine of business logistics, it will kill it. The same study found that 72% of businesses that experience major data loss close their doors within two years.

It has been said that your data backup solution is 50% of your business continuity plan. Unlike the complexity of logistics, you should not have to think about your data backup plan. The less time you spend planning and maintaining a data backup plan means you will have more time to fine tune your intricate business continuity plan.

There are several different backup solutions available to safeguard your data. Having a solution is better than no solution, but some are more effective than others. A good solution is to save your data on an external device like a tape-drive and store it offsite in case of a disaster like a fire or flood. Using your email to backup files, USB thumb drives, and external drives are all adequate backup plans, but each one of these plans has shortcomings and are unreliable against different threats.

We have found the Backup Disaster Recovery (BDR) solution to be the most secure option to protect your data. BDR continuously backups your entire network offsite, meaning when a major disaster strikes we can recover your data from the disaster. And for more common disasters, like a server going down, the BDR can assume the role of your network and keep your logistic machine a rollin'.

Whether you have a few computers or a massive network, your data is important and we want to help you find the solution that best fits your needs. Give us a call today at (703) 821-8200 and let us worry about 50% of your business continuity plan for you.