More than 2/3 of organizations experience business downtime every year due to an IT outage. Even the smallest outage can lead to hours or days of lost productivity. Anytime your business experiences downtime it becomes costly. Employee productivity and sales revenues will be down, production will be delayed, all of these will cost your organization money. Not to mention the expensive cost of data recovery. With all of this at stake, it is very important that your organization has a solid solution and plan in place to protect against any disaster that may occur. As with every technology solution, there are hundreds of Solution Providers out there and you need to do your due diligence to make sure you choose a solution that is right for your organization. You will need a solution that is reliable and has speed and agility in both data backups and recoveries. Outside of those things, here is some other criteria you should evaluate when selecting your data recovery solution:
- Total Cost of Ownership. You need to understand everything you are paying for when deploying a solution. There is the cost that goes with purchasing a solution, but there is also every other cost you incur while using the solution. Upfront costs are the easiest to know ahead of time. The trickier ones to determine are additional fees such as upgrade costs or technical support fees, setup time and costs, monitoring costs, and disaster recovery testing and recovery time and fees. You need to understand there is much more that goes into pricing a solution than the sticker price on the box.
- Reliability. You need to look for a solution that supports your business before, during, and after an issue occurs. You need to also make sure the solution will expand with the evolution of your technology. Some areas to evaluate are product performance, product updates, product stability, and the quality of support. Getting your business back up and running with no permanent damage is the goal you need to strive for. You need to implement a solution that is reliable enough to be able to do that for your business.
- Growth. Will your IT infrastructure look different in 3-5 years? If your company is growing in size, that means the amount of data in your organization is also growing. You need to make sure you get a solution that has the ability to grow with you without slowing down response times. Also as you add staff, is your solution easy to learn? Will a non-technical user be able to recover files and manage the solution if IT isn’t readily available? As your organization grows, these are all things you need to consider. You can’t just select a solution that can work with your current make-up or you will cause your business more grief and money in the end.
- Security & Compliance. Where is your data being backed up? What is the Data center security? Are there any compliance requirements you need to be aware of for your industry and does the solution you selected protect you? How does the solution handle data encryption, security roles on a user basis, audit logs, etc…. You need to make sure that you are choosing a solution that fits the demands of your organization. Don’t compromise the integrity of your data by using a solution that isn’t a fit.
If you currently have a data recovery solution, that is a step in the right direction. But don’t think just because you have a solution in place, you don’t need to think about this anymore. Make sure you go through the above criteria and apply that to the solution you currently have. If your solution doesn’t match the criteria you set, then you need to replace it with a solution that does. The amount of money you lose for any downtime, not to mention the risk you are putting on your business by having an ineffective solution, will be more costly to your organization than a replacement solution will be. As long as the replacement solution is the most effective one to protect your business and your data. Make sure your solution provides fast and reliable protection for your data, application, and IT infrastructure. If you don’t currently have a solution or are in need of a better and more reliable solution, 2W Tech is happy to be an Axcient partner and can discuss if this solution is a fit for your organization.
Read More:
Can Cloud Solutions Solve the Internal IT Resources Issue?
Do You Have a Backup and Disaster Recovery Plan?