Disaster Recovery Planning And Business Survival Go Hand In Hand!

Imagine the effect on your business. The IT system fails and everything is lost. Every single document on your network has seemingly gone up in a proverbial puff of smoke and the company is left with nothing – no records of orders, contracts, invoices, vital contacts, staff details, and payroll. Even the emails have simply vanished.

IT is the lifeblood of any organisation and those who fail to take the correct steps to protect it do so at their peril. Loss of data is a major threat to businesses of all sizes – from single desktop operations to multi-networked concerns.

Any IT solution should not be restricted to the basics like computer support , but should also take into account business continuity planning.

The sad fact is that nobody can predict if a business or a consumer is likely to suffer from a data loss emergency, but there are a number of areas that are generally prone potential problems which could arise from a basic electrical power surge, electronic or mechanical failure or even a sabotage attempt by a disgruntled employee. You also have to consider acts of nature i.e floods, storms or even natural disasters depending on your locality.

There is a lot more interest being taken in the topic of business continuity recently, but the implementation of disaster recovery solutions has been pretty hit and miss for many companies and businesses, many of which still rely on aging tape back up technology. One of the biggest failings is testing the system that has been put in place and many companies have felt the pain of the backup simply not being available in their hour of need.

This then leads to the need for far more expensive data recovery or raid data recovery as a method of hopefully retrieving vital data.

Many companies are now investing in remote data backup models as part of their business continuity strategy as these have a number of significant advantages.

For example, if your server or building was damaged by flood or fire and you needed to vacate the premises, even if your back up tapes were available (many companies do not even keep an offsite version) you would still need to source a suitable drive and donor server to restore them. Back up data store on remote servers and data centers will allow you access to your data even if you have to set up in a temporary office.

If you have not yet implemented a disaster recovery plan for your business then you should put this high on your business agenda. Could your business survive if it were to lose all the client records on your CRM system or financial data from your accounts package. Don’t forget the cost is not purely the loss of data but also the lost business that may ensue as well as the time and resource to get things back on track.

And of course on a final note, once you have implemented a business continuity plan make sure you test it to make sure the plan is robust in a real environment.

For more help and advice visit the data recovery Manchester website.