Maintenance is More than Computer Repair
When you think of downtime, you probably think about the power or your Internet connection going out and leaving you unable to do work. Unfortunately, these are anecdotes that seem benign, but are actually extraordinarily costly. When interruptions to your business’ computing infrastructure are constantly hindering productivity, you need to come up with a solution.
Technology-Induced Downtime
The way your technology functions is extremely important to reducing the amount of downtime your organization suffers. When your network and applications unexpectedly fail and crash, you will see substantial dips in productivity, a metric that is hard to quantify.
The best way to explain this is to look at how downtime affects large companies. According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime in the enterprise sector is about $5,600 per minute. In fact, 98-percent of enterprises say that an hour of operational downtime can cost well over $100,000.
Now, as a small business owner, you may be thinking that downtime is bad, but at least we don’t see that type of loss…Well, think again. Percentage of loss is right in line all the way down to mom-and-pop businesses. If you were to have an hour of operational downtime because a server component fails, you are looking at a massive loss. Sometimes, these losses are fatal for businesses that are unprepared.
Other Problems
The largest problem with downtime of any kind is the money you are spending to get nothing out of it. No other place is this more evident than having situational downtime that affects a number of your employees. Say one workstation fails in your office and it results in one person troubleshooting problems with a break/fix or onsite IT administrator. Not only are you getting nothing from the employee, you are also paying the technician a premium rate to support that piece of technology. If you think about it, one failed computer in the peak productivity hours of the workday will cost you at least hundreds if not thousands of dollars.
Then you have to consider: what if that were my server?
You quickly will understand that it is completely untenable to not do what you can to avoid large swaths of downtime inside your business.
What You Can Do
There are a few things you can do to actively fight downtime. They include:
Proactively Maintain Your Technology
The best thing that you can do for your business’ technology is to get a managed services provider to actively monitor and maintain all of your network-attached hardware. With state-of-the-art technology, an MSP can not only see how all of your technology is functioning, it can typically fix issues these systems have before they can become downtime-inducing problems.
Keep Your Software Updated
Malware is a big problem for any business. As such, there needs to be an ongoing policy that keeps all network-attached software updated and patched for security vulnerabilities. An exploit of any holes in your software can turn into major downtime and even worse, so keeping software updated has to be a priority.
Isolate Problems
One of the best ways to keep downtime to a minimum is to use technology services to do so. A comprehensive help desk offering can keep downtime to a minimum by giving employees direct access to tech support. Most times the help desk technician can help resolve issues in minutes, and even if they can’t they can expedite situations to the proper maintenance channels.
Comprehensive Backup
Finally, every business that utilizes information technology to their advantage needs to protect the data and infrastructure by having a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery platform. The BDR backs up data in-house, and in the cloud to give organizations the peace of mind that no matter what happens, their data is safe.
If you own a business, limiting downtime is a priority. If you would like to learn how Point North Networks helps minimize downtime, give us a call today at 651-234-0895.
Top 10 Reasons to back up data
A good business owner envisions the future and what it could bring about. You may have already devoted a considerable amount of time to the good things that could happen, but how often do you picture the bad?
If you don’t imagine the worst-case scenario, you could be putting your business on the line. Are you prepared to deal with data loss or data corruption?
Data backup and disaster recovery are critical components of any successful business. Most companies rely on data in at least some capacity, so without it, operations can be stymied significantly. This is reason enough for you to have backup data. However, there are several other reasons for data backups. Here are the most important ones.
Why You Should Have a Data Backup Plan
Data backup is extremely important in today’s digital world where cyber threats are increasingly becoming a menace. As Morgan Stanley describes it, “Backing up data refers to the process of making a copy of the information typically stored on your desktop or laptop computer, smartphone or tablet.”
Loss of data could happen due to human error, accidental deletion (68% of businesses report this as the main reason for data loss), natural disasters, malicious attacks, external hard drive failure or another hardware failure, or stolen or lost devices. Data backups on a regular basis are one of the best practices all businesses must follow.
As the IT world evolves, so does the need to have backups on different devices including mobile devices or your desktop system.
Prevention from data loss
Preventing loss of data is the main reason to have a data backup. Having data backups will ensure that you are able to recover your lost data easily and continue your business operations. As most businesses now operate digitally, the importance of data has never been so crucial. And making sure that have a proper data backup plan will only ensure that your business doesn’t face any obstacles.
Competitive edge
In case of data loss, your business might come to a standstill and other, more prepared businesses will be able to take advantage of this situation. However, if you have data backups, you will be able to continue with your business as usual.
Reduced downtime
Research shows that 42% of companies faced major downtime due to loss of data. Having data backup will reduce the time spent looking for lost information. By creating a proper backup system, you will ensure that your productivity is not hampered.
A must for a disaster recovery plan
A disaster recovery plan is a set of policies and procedures you follow during a disaster. Data backup is one of the most important components of this plan as it allows businesses to get back to work without disruptions.
Having an archive
Many businesses rely on past data for present and future operations. Data backup enables them to create an archive that can be dug into to find important data whenever the need arises.
Fast recovery
Cyber threats like malicious email links, etc can result in data loss. Data backup will ensure that you can restore things before all is lost.
Reduce unwanted work
Reports indicate that more than 41% of companies face reduced productivity due to data inaccessibility. Data backups mean you can quickly find deleted files and reduce the unwanted work of searching for data haphazardly.
Better auditing
Audits are an important part of every business life cycle. With proper data backup, you can ensure that all financial, accounting or other regulatory information is available readily, making audits a breeze.
Annual reporting
Annual reports require data for the entire year or even more. Data backup will ensure that you have access to it, helping you create more detailed annual reports.
Peace of mind
With proper data backup, you can enjoy peace of mind as you will not have to worry about loss of data and how you will tackle the situation.
Disaster Recovery Process
The process of such recovery is just as important, as without it, you cannot get back into business following the loss of business-critical data. You must enable actions like incremental backup and differential backup to ensure things are fine.
This is what enables your business to maintain operations even in the face of severe disasters, like a hacking incident or a natural disaster.
While having data backup is helpful, you still need a method that ensures a quick recovery time to avoid downtime. You might consider concepts like data backup, operations, workforce longevity, and alternative working conditions when putting together your recovery plan, whether the disaster is from nature or your fellow humankind.
Your business should implement a cloud-based data backup system for increased storage capacity and a recovery tool that takes periodic snapshots of your data. Storing data on Cloud will allow you to accomplish the following:
- Data backup can be taken throughout the workday rather than only once at the end of the day.
- Cloud makes backups accessible at a moment’s notice, something which is incredibly valuable when recovering from a disaster.
When your company is under pressure from a disaster, time is critical. You don’t want to be worrying about how and when to restore your data. It helps to just have the cloud take care of these processes for you.
Other Data backup best practices
Now that you are familiar with the importance of data backup, let’s look at the ones that will allow you to save your data better and provide you with a competitive advantage.
- Always take full backups of your data
- Keep the backup of original data easily accessible
- Follow the 3-2-1 rule
- Make storing backup information on the cloud or Google Drive a habit
- Keep a check on your stored data and the last full backup
- Perform backups – full backups, differential backups and incremental backups regularly
How Point North Can Help with Backups
Start taking your data backup and disaster recovery seriously before you suffer from a situation that could easily have been prevented. Alternatively, partner with a data backup solution provider like Point North.
We enable a host of services to both large and small businesses including incremental backups, differential backups, backup services, saving backups, Cloud Services like cloud storage, full backup services, regular backups, and a lot more.
To learn more about how you can take advantage of enterprise-level data backup and disaster recovery solutions, reach out to Point North Networks, Inc., at 651-234-0895.
Frequently Asked Questions About Data Backup
Why is data backup important?
Businesses today deal with heaps of data. Most of their operations and a majority of their success depend on the data they store. If this data is lost, businesses will get crippled and will take a long time to get back to action. However, data backup can prevent this situation and have them back running in case of a loss of data.
How data backup helps businesses?
It is a process that gives businesses a competitive advantage, reduces downtime, provides an archive, allows faster recovery, reduces workload in finding the right data, enables better auditing and annual reporting and gives absolute peace of mind.
Why is it a good idea to hire a data backup service provider?
Dealing with data is a critical function and you just can’t afford to go wrong there. Having a professional partner will ensure that your data is stored safely on Cloud or remote location and that the process of data storing is followed meticulously.
