Cloud Back Up an option for Small and Medium Business?

One of the most over looked areas in Small Business Information Systems is data backup and more importantly recovery.

For many it is a complete afterthought with no system in place what so ever.  This is extremely dangerous as hard drives are one of the most common things to fail in a server. Not to mention many of the lower end servers have relatively weak redundancy if any at all when it comes to hard drives.

Others get a small storage system or tape backup onsite unit thinking that should be enough. Now while there is generally a small chance of something catastrophic happening to the location where it is houses, do you really want to risk something as critical as your business data?

Losing important business data can be a costly blow!

Offsite backup has been a staple in the enterprise for many years. There are a few traditional ways that have been used to accomplish this task.

One commonly used method was to have a third party company like Iron Mountain take your tape/disk backups offsite. This allowed for excellent protection of your data, but came with time issues when you wanted to restore something that was no longer onsite. You started to see more and more Disk to Disk to Tape type setups so that there could be both a local copy as well as a remote archive. Unfortunately for Small and Medium businesses this is extremely costly in both the equipment needed as well as the cost of the service.

Another commonly used method involves having multiple sites. If you have multiple locations you can have a process of taking the archive tapes to the other location. This gives you decent redundancy and can reduce the cost of the service and/or equipment. However if you second location is geographically close then you have the risk of a natural disaster destroying both sites. If it is not close then you run into the same problem when trying to perform restores.

Bringing in the Cloud

Many companies are not ready for a complete change to a Cloud based infrastructure. Originally Cloud was designed more for large enterprises and not even a major thought for the usefulness it could provide the Small and Medium Business space. However it has become a great way to get enterprise type functions at a reasonable cost.

Backing up to the Cloud is nothing new. Many people have heard of companies like Carbonite, Mozy, etc. People have been using this for backing up important home files for several years now. This same process can be used for business as well. There are many advantages to using online services like these.

For one, most businesses lack experts in data protection. Knowing what to back up is only part of it. Understanding how often, what type, and where to back up is completely different. Most of these online services have a simple method for tracking and maintaining your back up data.

Another great advantage is that it takes care of several issues at once.

• Offsite Back Up
• Restore directly from the Cloud
• Little to no local equipment cost
• Security
• Protection from Natural Disasters

 Now that I mentioned the benefits, let us take a look at the concerns that have to be taken into account when looking at online / Cloud back up services.

1 - Bandwidth 

This is going to be a big concern when considering looking at taking all of you important data and sending it across the internet. You have to consider just how much you are going to back up on a daily basis.

Now much of the concern can be alleviated, if you do not have a lot of data changes. Most businesses will find that the amount of files that are changed on a daily basis is relatively small.

Setting up your back up service to only back up the changed files will reduce the bandwidth needed dramatically. However if you do have terabytes of changes daily, then this could be an issue.

In any case the initial backup could take days or even weeks if not planned carefully.

2 - Security 

Nothing like putting your business out on the internet to cause panic in a security minded person.

You want to make sure that any provider will cover the following areas according to your needs.

• Encryption - You want your data to be encrypted so that if anyone did happen to get their hands on your data it would be useless to them
• Compliance - You want to make sure that they are compliant with any compliance you must follow in your business like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, etc.
• Geography – Make sure your data is not in one location, that it is geographically dispersed. If not you run the same risk as keeping your data locally.
• Termination Agreement – Make sure that if you wish to end the service that your data will be purged

3 - Provider Reliability

You want to make sure that if you are going to back up your business critical data to a provider that they will be around so that you can recover it as needed. Look at their history, their financial situation, clients, etc. Be comfortable with their business model and that it is sustainable.

4 - Recovery

The ability to back up data is extremely important. However what is more important is the ability to recover the data! If you can’t then backing it up does not do you a whole lot of good.

Make sure that you understand the process for recovering data. Since it is an online service it is not sitting right in front of you.

Understand that it is driven by the same bandwidth issues that may occur as when backing up large amounts of data. The more data to recover, the longer it will take.

Ultimately the key here is the ability to get the data back.

5 - Cost 

While total cost may and should be lower than other offsite methods, there is still concern in this area depending on how the provider decides to charge for their service.

• Many of the providers will charge based on bandwidth and storage used. One thing to keep in mind that it is not 1 for 1 on data needed to back up your data. For instance if you have 100 GB of data it may take 250 GB to back it up depending on how many revisions of changes you want to be available. You will want to research this before choosing a provider that charges in this manner.

• Flat Fees are not as common for business services. However you will want to read the fine print. There is generally a catch as bandwidth and storage space is not infinite.

• Other Fees need to be looked out for as well. There may be additional services you want, like archiving to tape, etc. Many of the top tier providers will offer this, however the cost can be substantial.

Backing up your data to the Cloud is a major decision and should not be taken lightly. In fact data protection in general, although a boring concept, can be one of the most important decisions your business may have to make. More and more information is being kept digitally not on paper.

Just like you would protect paper files in the past by making duplicates, storing in secure location, and offsite locations, you must do the same for your data. Your business may very well depend on it.

Credits

Some of the research for this article came from a Tech Republic article by Scott Lowe. You can find that article located here.