My Two Cents, by Archie Tucker

Everyone knows how important a good backup is but what about off-site backups? Off-site backups or off-site data protection, is the strategy of storing critical data off the main site as part of a disaster recovery plan. Sending backups off-site ensures systems and servers can be reloaded with the latest data in the event of a disaster, accidental error, or system crash.

Now that we have defined what an off-site backup is, let talk about why. Imagine you came to your office tomorrow to find that all your files have disappeared for some reason (Natural disaster, theft, sabotage, hardware failure, user error, software viruses, etc.). How would this affect your business?

Some statistics gathered from various sources on this topic:

• 30% of all businesses that have a major fire go out of business within a year. 70% fail within five years. (Home Office Computing Magazine)
• 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.
• 93% of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. 50% of businesses that found themselves without data management for this same time period filed for bankruptcy immediately. (National Archives & Records Administration in Washington)
• Companies that aren’t able to resume operations within ten days (of a disaster hit) are not likely to survive. (Strategic Research Institute)

Mindware offers this off site backup service to our customers who have BackupEdge. You should be on BackupEdge version 3.0. Older versions of BackupEdge may require an upgrade. The service is only $30 per month for the first company and includes 5 days of backups. For what it costs for a average cup of coffee per day, you can have off-site backup, so what are you waiting for? Our operators are waiting for your call.