Grappling with the Challenges of Backing up Remote Offices
One of the most important practices of an organization is the safe protection of its data. Traditionally, businesses turn to local storage devices for their data backup. However, cost constraints, large data growth, limited bandwidth, security concerns and reliability have necessitated a move to external sources for a better solution. Backup devices such as tapes and external hard disks are not very reliable because they create efficiency bottlenecks, they are certainly labor intensive and can be a single critical point of failure. Mirroring your own data to another office is a great way to keep your data available, but does nothing to help you recover an old version of the document you edited last week. In addition, it’s expensive for business.
Let’s face it. Companies are continuing to look for increased automation, encryption security, process verification, data management tools and third parties they can trust. It’s not just an immediate issue, but a long term one for businesses. Typically, remote offices don’t have the personnel resources, expertise, tools and dedication to proper data protection, which contributes to exposure vulnerability and risk to the company. Think about it for just a minute. If you could centrally manage your remote offices and all their data from a single computer, wouldn’t you say “Sign me up”? Why battle all of the manual and unreliable issues that present with tape or external hard drives, when secure technology exists today at an affordable cost.
Automation of your backups is important, but the need for easy, effective data recovery when overseeing multiple offices is crucial. Rather than calling someone at another location, asking them to pull tape(s) and find a file to restore, wouldn’t you like to be able to do that from your office and computer in a matter of minutes? Become a better steward of your valued personnel by utilizing technology that allows you to restore data in a granular or large state very easily.
Fact: Data is growing at an alarming rate for businesses. That sums up your need for cost effective scalability utilizing the most efficient data protection and management tools available. Staying abreast of regulatory mandates via audit trails and process validation is critical to business compliance. In this era of web based applications and cloud computing, easy to use central management tools have never been more important.
Embracing change is easier for some than others, especially when it comes to technology. I was talking to a business just the other day that has a couple of remote offices, one is partially backed up and the other not at all. He understands the advantages with our type of solutions, but he is grappling with the leap from little to no backup of his company’s data (very high risk) to something totally new, seamless and takes care of all his problems (minimal risk). Time will tell soon if he will take that leap of faith or sit and pray nothing bad happens to his data. Which way do you want to run your business on a daily basis? Maybe today’s the day for you to take that step forward and embrace cloud backup and recovery.
CoreVault, America’s most endorsed cloud backup and recovery solution, identifies, protects and manages your business’s most valuable asset. Their tailored and managed services will automatically store and encrypt your business’s critical data off-site at their private data centers with 24 x 7 customer support. You also get to enjoy technologies and benefits like monitored backups, data deduplication, local storage, 4 levels of data recovery 24 x 7, continuous data protection (CDP), hosted data services, CBRM certified engineers and SAS 70 Type II certified facilities.
About the Author: Jeff Cato is V.P. of Marketing at CoreVault, an online data backup and cloud based data storage company located in Oklahoma.