IT Thinking

Ditch the tape and go online

For some years there have been offsite online backup services available to businesses, however in our view the technology has only really matured in the last 12 months to the point that it offers a genuinely robust and cost effective solution for most small to medium sized businesses and organisations.

There are a number of reasons for this, not least of which has a lot more to do with the availability of high bandwidth data connectivity than the stability of the backup software.

There are some big benefits to companies wanting to adopt Online Backups which at a high level include the following;
• The backup is fully automated removing the need for someone to remember to change tapes or disks and then take the backup home with them.
• The backed up data is stored offsite and is always available should your business suffer, fire, flood, theft or any other kind of damage.
• There is always a vast amount of space to back up data, so it is highly unlikely that you’ll run out of space.
• This kind of solution is cost effective with a low upfront cost and reasonable monthly costs thereafter.
The biggest thing for most businesses is that it takes the risk of human error out of the equation and ensures that your back up is done and stored safely and securely for when you need it.
This all sounds great, however there are some things that vendors are not always as up front about with you as we would hope;
• Many of the systems available are limited in that they only back up data and do not include operating systems, databases or even e-mail systems, which could very clearly leave you with only half the data you need to recover.
• Restoring your server can take a very long time simply because some of these solutions have very slow download speeds from their backup servers.
• They are not disaster recovery solutions as such, although they clearly help reduce risk.

For some companies one of more of these drawbacks can be significant for others they aren’t, but they key thing is to understand what they are.

Our recommended approach is always to get advice and find out what will work for your organisation and what won’t. Your business is unique, so a one size fits all backup solution may not be appropriate to your particular needs.

So what of OCD’s offering? We are unashamed to state that we are still in final testing with some clients of a new approach to online backup. We say unashamed because we won’t just launch a product because we can. It has to work and be relevant and as previously stated now that data connectivity is good enough and reliable enough we are comfortable that a backup service will be too.

Our new solution will combine the benefits of an online backup with the convenience of a local backup;
• It is fully automated removing the human error risk
• It takes a complete image of your server and stores it in a format that enables you to recover to a completely different server or the same one.
• A local backup copy is available making it faster and easier to restore a server