Backup vs. Recovery: Why Backup In Not Enough

These days, server or computer downtime often means an organization can’t serve its customers, at least not efficiently, and can’t process billing and transactions. This can often lead to thousands of dollars of lost revenue, a poor reputation, or even the failure of the business.

Recent data shows that 76 percent of companies experienced an outage in the last year and most of those outages or data loss incidents were a result of human error and the expectation that businesses have is that if the data is backed up, data recovery should be fast. However, using a backup solution to meet business continuity needs is a good start but when it comes down to restoring those backups often business owners learn that data backup is simply not a comprehensive information and application recovery solution.

Common examples of backup methods include portable hard drives, tapes, or cloud storage. Many

companies think these methods will protect them if there’s an outage or a disaster. The unfortunate reality is that while backup is generally inexpensive and convenient, it does not ensure quick recovery when a disaster occurs. It only ensures that the data is stored somewhere and can be accessed…eventually. This means that post-outage, a business will often have a considerable delay in getting up and running trying to piece together data and applications so that operations can continue.

Although, as I mentioned, off-site backup is better than nothing, it’s not a comprehensive solution. How much would it cost your business if it took 24, 48, or even longer than 72 hours to restore your data and applications in the event of an outage?

Before moving to nology, a recent client of mine experienced a desktop failure and was using a popular low cost backup solution. The great news, the files were backed up. The bad news, according to the restore tool it was going to take more than 2 entire days to restore the data over the internet and that did not even include reinstalling the applications and settings things back up. Overall, they were down for almost the entire week…not good.

At nology we provide more than just cloud backup solutions, we provide a full suite of cloud and IT services that are redundant, reliable, and robust, allowing you to get back to work in a matter of minutes in the event of an issue or outage. We don’t just store your data in the cloud, we store your applications, servers, files, databases, and more. This means that you have a quick recovery solution and not just a backup solution. 

At nology we work with small and medium sized businesses in Minneapolis and around the country to ensure they not only have a backup solution, but a recovery strategy as well.