small businesses unfortunately choose to ignore this cardinal rule: Every hard drive fails. No exceptions. It’s not a matter of if, but of when. Parts wear out. Power surges happen. When a hard drive fails, all the data on it becomes jeopardized. For this reason alone, cloud backup services could serve as a lifeline for small businesses like yours.
Accessible via the Internet, cloud backup services create periodic secure backups of critical data on offsite servers. These servers are well-maintained and frequently exchanged to protect the data. If the business experiences a computer crash or an even greater catastrophe, the data remains safe and can be downloaded to new computers whenever needed.
Advantages of Cloud Backups:
• Offsite storage. You might have several backups in-house, but what if a natural disaster destroys your office? Having at least one backup offsite adds a needed extra layer of protection.
• Accessible from anywhere. If you upgrade your equipment or move offices, your critical data stays available anywhere you have an Internet connection.
• A lifeline for businesses. For most companies today, loss of critical data like customer records or financials could literally put them out of business. By contrast, when you back up this data in the cloud, your physical location could be out of commission, but you’d still have a business.
Limitations/Drawbacks of Cloud Backup Services
• Amount of storage limited by budget. The more data you must store, the greater the monthly cost. (Some businesses compensate for this expense by backing up only critical data in the cloud.)
• Time restrictive. Internet backups take much longer than USB or thunderbolt connections; they can also consume bandwidth, increasing your ISP costs. (Cloud backups generally work best for businesses whose storage needs don’t increase dramatically each month.)
Signs Your Business Might Need a Cloud Backup Service:
• You’ve already experienced some data loss by a failed hard drive, or want to prevent that disaster from happening
• You need a cost-efficient, offsite solution for backing up your most critical files
• The rate of change in your data backups is less than 10 percent per month.
Data-heavy companies might require more robust backup solutions than cloud backups can offer, but for most small businesses, having a good cloud backup system in place could save the company during a crisis. Call our offices for more information to decide if this solution is right for you.
Additional Reading:
• Cloud Backup Tutorial: How to Leverage Cloud Backup Services