Today’s small to mid-sized businesses, or SMBs, are creating more data than ever. Their growth calls for more robust solutions to back up their business-critical data.

Do you know why backup is critical for today’s SMBs? Successful backup is the foundation for disaster recovery and business continuity. Without it, recovery and continuity cannot exist. Technologies that were created decades ago to store data are simply not enough. Antiquated methods, like tape backup, aren’t going to ensure data retention and recovery during business critical time windows.

When choosing a backup solution, SMBs should look for six important pieces of criteria: comprehensiveness, ease of use, recoverability, performance and reliability, affordability, and scalability.

Why?

• Small businesses generally do not have a dedicated IT department that can manage separate backup, recovery and business continuity solutions.
• A combination of on-premises and cloud-based services offer the best total protection for businesses of all sizes, especially small businesses.
• Keep in mind, as SMB employees tend to take on multiple roles at work, managing IT shouldn’t be one of them.
• Solutions that offer intelligent user interfaces and are also supported by a vast network of managed service providers are often the best choices.
• Most SMBs carry less than a month of operating costs in cash, so downtime can quite literally ‘break the bank’. Instant recovery capabilities can remedy this. Hardware systems do sometimes fail, and at that point users can rely on instant virtualization of failed systems. The strongest of providers will be able to convert a backup into a running system in a matter of seconds. In the event of natural disasters, complete system replication is necessary, which allots users a complete infrastructure on which to host their business.
• Virtualization refers to the process around creating a virtual version of something. In the case of business continuity, this would likely be servers, devices, applications, or entire networks. The virtualized versions act completely independently from the physical devices. This feature keeps businesses functioning when the physical devices fail, minimizing downtime.
• Keeping your data secure, whether it be personal or business, is hugely important when selecting a backup solution. Natural disasters can wipe out entire facilities, so it is important to choose a provider with multiple, geographically separated data centers.

Business Continuity

When selecting your backup and business continuity solution keep in mind the key elements you want. Highly reliable solutions will yield full backups in a smarter, storage-saving way, limit downtime, and offer strong functionality at all levels. It’s also important to keep in mind your company’s long-term goals.

If you are growing at a healthy pace, search for a provider that can grow with you while catering to your budget. Remember, finding the best backup and business continuity provider for your business is the first step to safeguarding your business’s data and future as a whole.

Business Continuity: Keep Operations On When Lights Go Off