When it comes to dealing with company and business data,
you would have long heard of the advice to carry out data backups.
In fact, you will be in the minority if you do not carry out backups of any kind.

We are strong advocates of data backup and would not hesitate to play the role of a nagging mother should any of our clients choose to dis-regard the importance of their data and its backup. The value of the data stored on a computer, workstation, server often far exceeds that of the hardware. Businesses often carry out inventory checks on the hardware but it is the data that is often more valuable.

“Yes, we do backup our data daily.”

As we engage our would-be clients, this is becoming more prevalent. We are glad to see this but as we dig deeper, we see a disturbing trend.

1. Data backups … On what media?

One might carry out backups and these days, it will be hard press to find one that still backups in tape. Tapes tend to have a higher failure rate than disk. If you are still backup-ing up to tape, you might want to reconsider your options. Disk backups are hardier and often have a better restore rate than tapes.

Speaking of disks, there still exists a distinct difference between how disk data backups are being carried out. We often hear of businesses backing up their data to external USB disk drives. Sure, this would fall nicely into the category of disk backups but an external USB disk drive would hardly make up a robust data backup routine. Why? Consider the following …

2. Data backups … Where?

After determining the requirement of carrying out data backup on disks, next to consider is which of the many disk drives alternatives does one deploy. In answering that, one needs to understand the objective of doing data backups. If one’s aim is solely to carry out data restores, then perhaps an simple disk drive backup would be sufficient, maybe a external USB disk drive or an inexpensive 2-disk Network Attached Storage device?

But what if a fire burns your office to the ground – or a thief breaks in and steals your server and equipment – or a natural disaster floods your office or makes it impossible to access your workstations and server, the onsite disk backup solution that you have just deployed would be useless to you.

Oh, I hear the usual common response “No, it won’t happen to me.”

Yes, it would be nice that it never ever happens to you and your business … but then again, why are you still purchasing and renewing that fire and burglary insurance for your office premise? It won’t happen to you RIGHT?

3. Data backups … How?

A quick Google on data backups and you will get enough hits to write a thesis research paper.

Each service provider touts its product and service offering as superior but evaluating and sieving out the list would be take significant effort. Cutting down all the fancy names, at the base of the offerings, each provides fundamentally the same. Offsite data backup and restore of your data.

But how does one know which provider to choose?

4. Data backups … Is it sufficient?

We all understand the need for data backups and the ability to restore, but is it sufficient? Being able to backup and subsequently being able to restore the data does not mean that you will be up and running after a failure.

Consider the instance your workstation has just suffered a catastrophic disk failure. You pat yourself on the back for having carried out data backup on an external disk drive and look forward to being able to work with your data at the soonest opportunity.

Mmm, just how soon is that? You will need to replace the workstation, install the operating system and then install the appropriate applications before one can consider to start the restore process. That’s easily a whole day’s work. Now, what happens if its the server? Is it sufficient to just carry out data backup diligently? How would your business recover from a failure on your server? What would the downtime be?

Considering all of the above, that’s where we come in.

Over the years, we have come to understand the requirements of the Small Business client. We understand the need to listen to your needs and work out a solution for you. As a Small Business owner, you want a solution that works and you want to be able to restore your data and use it effectively with the shortest possible downtime. Nothing fanciful but something that just works!

Here’s why our clients place their trust in our onsite and offsite backup solutions:

• We will sit down with you to understand your business requirements
• We will provide you with our advice, experience and best practices
• We will tailor our solutions to meet your requirements
• We will walk you through and manage the entire process, right from the initial backup
• We will monitor all your backup schedules
• We offer free help-desk support for recovering files (Some service providers charge extra for each restore)
• We are a local company with a physical presence. While that might not seem to matter to you, some of the backup service providers don’t have a local presence and there is no other way of reaching out to them other than on the phone or via email. We will come onsite, shake your hand, offer our expertise and even buy you a cup coffee. Would you rather deal with a local Singapore based company that can meet with you face-to-face rather than an unknown entity with a beautiful website?