Compass Consulting proudly presents “Disaster Recovery”, the second episode of our new informative technology video series, Compass Tech TV. Created and produced by OneTwelve Productions, a Compass Consulting marketing and multi-media subsidiary, we invite you to take a glance into the importance of this dreaded topic, also known as “backups.”
Disaster Recovery – or – Beyond Backup
10% of all small businesses have been affected by a man-made disaster. A staggering 30% have been impacted by natural disasters. Only 6 percent of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss survive, 43 percent never reopen and 51 percent close within 2 years.
OK, scratch that…
There is a large body of cleverly massaged statistics that will support the inevitability that you will experience a catastrophic disaster that will snuff out your business.
And we’re all used to being assaulted by advertisers using scare tactics to pressure us into a purchasing decision.
I am not going to resort to such questionable methods.
Straight up… the imperative when discussing the necessity of disaster recovery is not data dredging and scare tactics, but responsible due diligence related to risk assessment, mixed with a common sense approach to network management.
We at Compass Consulting think the topic can be reduced to this one simple question…
Have you included disaster recovery as a key component of your business continuity plan?
To begin, let’s talk “Backups.”
If you ever want to kill a conversation before it starts just use the word “backups.” It can have several meanings, but mostly it means “I don’t want to talk about backups.” Since the advent of the backup system, it’s been associated with a frustrating process, fraught with failures, and an unwelcome cost of doing business. To some, backups are unnecessary because nothing so disastrous would ever happen… at least to them. The backup process often has no internal company ownership, and is commonly ignored by service providers charged with the responsibility of guaranteeing their success – and testing their integrity.
So, incredibly, that which could sever the connection to your company’s network, data, and technology-driven business processes is often pushed to the back burner as a low-value target when considering business continuity planning.
The result? A dangerous dynamic – and a recipe for disaster.
What if I said you could have an enterprise-level system that would reliably backup your servers and data, at your place of business, and then automatically replicate that data to our secure data center – as often as every five minutes? You’ll never change a tape or external drive again, space-saving deduplication of your data will save on cost, you’ll have the ability to restore single files or entire servers on demand, and in the event you are unable to access your business we can restore your entire network environment at our data center, where you can remotely access it from anywhere. Most importantly, our systematic data integrity checks will ensure your data is viable and can be restored at a moment’s notice.
Now that’s valuable insurance. Insurance that you will not lose critical operating data. Insurance that you will not lose irreplaceable intellectual property. Insurance that you can achieve a recovery time objective that will ensure the continued operation of your business and not irreparably damage the confidence of your customers, stakeholders or employees.
Take for example a business with an annual revenue of one million that relies on its IT infrastructure to run their day-to-day operations. Depending of which of the myriad downtime calculators you may use, being down for just 72 hours could cost that business anywhere from $36,000 to $100,000. For good measure cut the lower cost in half.
The one-time cost to implement our advanced replication and disaster recovery system would still amount to less than one-half that cost. And the recurring annual cost of offsite storage and disaster recovery system management would be one-quarter that cost. Now we have insurance and value.
Things can happen… we don’t think that is up for debate. But it is how we prepare for those eventualities, and how we actively address them when they come uninvited, that says something about how we do business. And it could define whether we stay in business.
Have you included disaster recovery has a key component of your business continuity plan?