#8: Data is more valuable than what it is stored on: A recently published article by InfoWorld had the editor describing the value of her laptop as “$2 million”. Is the hardware in which it sits worth $2 million? Of course not, unless the InfoWorld editor paid well over current market prices for laptops ($2,000 to $5,000). It’s the data on her laptop that costs that much and its value to the company. Business information—key information required to run a business—increasingly exists on a person’s laptop/desktop. Gartner estimates that the rate of failure for laptops is as high as 15-20 percent per year. If that data is lost due to a disk drive crash or a stolen laptop or a virus attack and there is no backup of that data, the time required getting the data back (if it can be recovered at all) and the impact of the data loss to the company or department may be huge.
#7: Russian roulette is not a good model for backup procedures: According to The International Data Corporation (IDC), at every company from the smallest business to the Global 2000, an estimated 60 percent of vital data is stored on individual PCs, with little or no protection. Less than 8 percent of users backup their data on a daily basis. In addition, review and evaluation of data backup procedures is not a common practice among small and medium-sized businesses. One in three small and medium-sized businesses still wait until there is a problem before reviewing and evaluating their procedures. Lack of data backup procedures creates a huge exposure to laptop crashes, virus attacks and lost laptops.
#6: Backup and recovery are key to regulatory compliance: Regulations, such as HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), mandate data protection and security with no regard for the physical location of the data. A number of landmark rulings during 2003-2005, including Zubulake v. UBS Warburg and Coleman v. Morgan Stanley, reset judicial expectations and clarified companies’ obligations to preserve and produce all types and kinds of electronic information in litigation. These business and regulatory issues make it essential for an organization to implement backup and recovery practices. Privacy and security requirements of these regulations require that all data from remote PCs be transferred with encryption.
#5: The cost of downtime is high for large field organizations: Companies with remote sales, professional services and field service organizations realize that the cost of downtime is very high for them – in terms of real revenue dollars, as well as customer satisfaction. These field employees are always on the go – backups of key customer-facing data such as proposals, presentations, solutions, project plans, etc. is rarely done by them. As a result, the ability to automatically perform remote backups is extremely critical to ensure that in an event of a disk crash or a lost laptop, their PCs can be brought up without any loss of data in a very short period of time.
#4: Distributed organizations are prime data loss candidates: Organizations, such as school districts, small city and county offices, non-profit organizations and franchise networks, are more likely to be PC-centric with little to no applications running on a server. In addition, these organizations are likely to have very little to no IT support resources. Key IT tasks such as backup of data or patch updates rests on the individual PC users and is frequently not done. As a result, loss of data due to a disk crash or a paralyzing computer virus attack is likely to be very expensive and painful for such organizations.
#3: The proliferation of laptops has put more organizations at risk: IDC predicts that laptops will account for more than 40 percent of the PC market in 2006 and expects that overall notebook sales in the U.S. will surpass desktop sales by late 2007. Every year hundreds of thousands of laptops are either stolen or left behind in taxicabs or at hotel rooms. Last year alone, 300,000 laptops were reported lost or stolen in the U.S., with less than 2 percent ever recovered. A laptop theft is not just a loss of a thousand dollars of hardware – it is the missing data that can really set one back by days, in addition to potential security issues. An organization that automatically backs up data from all PCs ensures that an organization/person can quickly recover from a stolen or lost laptop and be up and running in no time.
#2: Online backup is now available on-demand via the Internet: You do not need to buy installed software anymore for backing up hundreds of desktops and laptops. Online remote backup capability is now available as an on-demand software service. Such a software service helps protect end-users from data loss by automating the scheduling and execution of internet based backups on a frequent basis. Data inside the laptops of your remote employees is backed up automatically for maximum uptime and protection. In addition, companies can now subscribe to managed services that ensure a new disk drive with all your automatically backed-up data as well as all installed programs is sent by overnight delivery in the event of a disk drive crash or a lost laptop. You can be up and running in virtually no time.
#1: Data security and peace of mind are affordable: Online backup software-as-a-service and associated managed services are relatively inexpensive. A few pennies a day per desktop or laptop is all you should budget for – whether your organization has fifteen PCs or fifteen thousand.