Insuring Foolproof Data Backups

There are literally millions of small businesses in the United States and nearly as many stories about how company information on a server or some computer had gotten lost, destroyed or somehow removed.

Many an IT consultant has been called to remedy the situation and has stepped in to discover a nightmare.

Most often, the firm in question has no data backup plan whatsoever. Only one episode of this situation is enough to cause the business owner or manager to rapidly implement a data backup policy. If the IT consultant is proficient, he or she will create a plan that's flexible and effective.

However, another scenario causes even more headaches. A firm may have what they think is an effective data backup procedure, only to find out that it's broken down at some point. I've seen situations where:

- the client never changed the tape
- the tape is jammed in the tape drive
- a glitch occurred in the scheduling and now the last good backup was September 7, 2004
- someone forgot to put a tape into the tape drive
- or some other disastrous situation

I've asked many a small company about their data backup scheme and I often get blank stares. A number respond positively and confidently that a reliable and effective backup scheme is in place. When I ask them if they ever needed to retrieve a particular file, document or spreadsheet, could they produce it, I get the blank stare.

I think the answer to this conundrum is to deploy an Internet-based backup plan. These plans are easy to use, effective and for the most part, a hands-off situation. Most of them are very inexpensive when compared to the cost of recovering or recreating the data.

Small firms are slowly loosing their fear of transferring company information over the web. Web-based backups just make a lot of sense. The backups take place during off hours and retrieval of information usually very easy. One particular brand of Internet backup software treats your data as though it were on an additional hard drive on your computer.

The benefits are:

- the backup procedure takes place automatically; no need for manual intervention
- no need for expensive tape cartridges
- no need for complex and confusing backup software
- data retrieval is a breeze
- the service is inexpensive
- the service is available 24 x 7
- the data is secure and encrypted for security
- backup an unlimited amount of data

I believe that once a business owner or manager discovers the benefits of online backups that it becomes a "no-brainer" to go with this type of service.

Some consumer oriented backup services are "smart" in that they automatically backup up certain files (spreadsheets, documents, PDFs) and folders. You can then also specify any additional folders or file types to backup. Backup services for the small enterprise provide software that easily lets you specify the data to be backed up.

While maybe not the "killer app" of the decade, web-based, automated data backup is a service that really deserves a look for the small business.

Tom Wieczorek, Owner, Sales Automation Specialists

http://www.theactpro.com

Training in how to flesh out your marketing and sales plans using the ACT! Contact Management software.

I work with small firms to show them how to implement their sales and marketing plans in a real and tangible way. Using contact management software, and other technologies, I show how to manage their customers and their sales opportunities and the communcation with them.

If it's important to you to insure that absolutely no sales opportunities slip through the cracks, visit our website http://www.theactpro.com

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