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There is No Excuse for Ignoring Backup and Disaster Recovery
Disaster strikes when we least expect it, and for the unprepared business, the consequences are dire.
According to a survey conducted by IDC, 80% of small and medium-sized business (SMB) respondents reported that network downtime costs their organizations at least $20,000 per hour. During the week of August 25-31, when Hurricane Harvey[1] made landfall in Texas, retail sales in Houston dropped 59% compared to the previous week, and total consumer spending fell 42.5%.
Following Hurricane Katrina, about 19,000 New Orleans-area businesses shut down forever (source: Census Bureau).
Financial Losses Make Headlines – Indirect Costs Close Businesses
Small businesses that compete with large corporations are intensely scrutinized by potential and current customers. Their very nature contributes to a perception that they’re less stable than a multinational competitor. As a result, when these organizations suffer an interruption that affects customers, the consequences can be terminal.
Let us also remember that ‘disasters’ are not limited to earthquakes, floods and hurricanes.
Hardware failures cause 45% of total unplanned downtime. Over the last two years, 93% of businesses[2] have experienced a tech-related disruption that directly impacted revenue, either through direct loss of money or through paying for additional recovery expertise (SOURCE: IDC).
For small businesses, business continuity plans and disaster recovery are an animal unto itself. Not only do their lack of IT resources make these companies the most appetizing targets for cyber attackers, but a glaring lack of preparedness means they’re also the least likely to recover from a disaster.
Despite these horrifying statistics, 52% of small business owners acknowledge that it would take at least three months to recover from a disaster, while more than 75% do not even have a disaster plan in place, according to a survey by Ohio-based Nationwide Insurance.[3]
What’s most alarming is that more than one third (38%) of small business owners say it is not important for their business to have a disaster recovery plan.
One major hurdle preventing SMBs from prioritizing disaster recovery and backup services is a surprising lack of understanding as to who owns responsibility for application and data backups. Contrary to popular belief, vendors like Microsoft and Amazon are only responsible for the integrity of their infrastructure and applications; maintaining back-ups of your data and applications is your responsibility.
We live in a world where news breaks 24/7/365, and the seemingly endless stream of headlines about breaches, data leakage, ransomware and other cyber fails affecting companies like Marriott, Equifax, Yahoo and Facebook has de-sensitized us as to the gravity of potential consequences. The disconnect is understandable, and if we’re being honest, most small business owners cannot relate to billionaires like Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
Business Continuity in the Face of Crisis Solidifies Brand Trust
Whether you operate a small business or a large corporation, it’s imperative that operations run continuously at peak performance levels – even when an adverse event occurs.
Legacy backup solutions can’t keep up with companies’ exploding data growth and user demand for ubiquitous availability. Downtime and recovery that takes many hours – even days – is simply unacceptable.
Proper business continuity plans help maintain critical business functions when a major disruption occurs, which could be natural disasters, fires, floods, malicious cyber-attacks, or a server crash. Also, as companies increasingly rely on software, platforms and infrastructure services delivered from a variety of resources, the complexity of backup and recovery increases exponentially.
Cloud resilience technology is the key to IT resilience and the continuous availability of data, applications and other critical resources. Yet, while cloud adoption is high and fewer SMBs have concerns about it, many are still have not backing up their software-as-a-service (SaaS) application data. A recent story in Channelnomics reported that only 29% back up such data from SaaS environments like Salesforce, Google’s G Suite or Microsoft Office 365.
If that doesn’t grab your attention, consider the following: according to Nemertes, more than 97% of organizations use SaaS solutions.
Microsoft Office 365, for example, enables your company to work anywhere, anytime, without the need to host your own email, files and content management infrastructure. Even though Microsoft hosts the infrastructure, this doesn’t replace your responsibility of maintaining a backup of your business-critical Office 365 data.
As previously mentioned, there is a surprising lack of understanding as to who owns responsibility for application and data backups. Veeam, a NexusTek partner, notes that the misunderstanding falls between Microsoft’s perceived responsibility and the user’s actual responsibility of protection and long-term retention of their Office 365 data.
Microsoft Office 365 Geo Redundancy is Often Mistaken for Backup
Backup takes place when a historical copy of data is made and then stored in another location. Geo redundancy protects against site or hardware failure, so if there is an infrastructure crash or outage, your users will remain productive and often oblivious to these underlying issues.
For most businesses having direct control over backups is paramount. If data deleted or attacked, you can recover while mitigating performance loss.
As cloud and outsourcing are a consideration for every other IT service decision, so too should they be for managing your company’s business continuity and disaster recovery. NexusTek Cloud Services offer the flexibility, visibility and control businesses need to be agile, and can address customers’ unique cyber security, business continuity, compliance and auditing requirements in cloud, hybrid or on-premise environments.
With NexusTek’s disaster recovery and backup services, your business never misses a beat. Leveraging award-winning tools for Microsoft Office 365 eliminates the risk of losing access and control over your Office 365 data including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business — so that your data is always available and protected.
NexusTek’s comprehensive backup, recovery and business continuity planning services are purpose-built to to ensure data and applications are restored and keep running when problems arise. Data is backed up and immediately retrievable in the event of loss, and eliminates disruptions due to faulty tape drives, disks, or inconsistent backup management.
Data is the currency of digital transformation.
With disaster recovery and backup services from the world’s foremost vendors, like Veeam, NexusTek provides customers with the most complete data management solutions to support better business outcomes.