Why Online Backups make sense for Small Business
So you are a Small Business and know you need to backup your company's data, will you choose conventional USB drive or tape based backup or will you backup your data to the cloud? Read below for the top 5 reasons Online Backups make sense for Small Business in particular.
1. Affordable
You most likely don't have the TBs of data which some larger corporate organisations have to justify outlaying money on expensive backup and storage technology along with the support staff to maintain it. Online backups offer the same technology and security used by large corporate organisations but with zero upfront costs and inexpensive monthly rates. There is also no need to employ a team of IT support staff to monitor and manage your backups because when you outsource to an online backup company this is taken care of for you.
2. Scalable and Elastic
As a Small Business you grow and times change, you need a service which can scale and grow with you and which is also elastic. Online backups are flexible and storage is allocated on demand. It is also de-allocated when customers delete old data which is no longer required. A good online backup service provider will automatically adjust your storage allocation to suit your requirements.
3. Offsite
Ensuring a copy of your data is offsite is particularly important as it protects you from local disasters such as fire, flood or theft. Your files may be stored remotely but are accessible from anywhere in the world, anytime as long as you have an internet connection. Backing up to a hard drive connected to your server or laptop really offers very limited protection when compared to offsite backups, and with a tape-based solution you are dependent on a staff member remembering to take the tape offsite every backup cycle.
4. Security
Traditional backups using USB drives are frequently not encrypted. Most online backup providers however offer military grade encryption and are actually more secure than older backup technology. Look for an online backup provider who will encrypt the data before and during transmission to the cloud and will keep this data encrypted at rest in a highly secured data centre.
5. Automatic
Set and forget, as a small business you may not have an IT department dedicated to managing your backups. Online backups make sense to Small Business as it can bring the costly and time consuming, but important task of backups under control by outsourcing to a specialist.
James
