Disaster plans crucial for SME continuity

advice to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on how to manage data storage in the event of a natural disaster, reports Current.com.

According to Karl Sice, Acronis Pacific GM: “Any data loss, through natural disaster or simple human mistake, can spell failure for businesses.”

“This year's unrelenting series of cyclones, floods, bushfires and earthquakes across Australia and New Zealand has proven the value of backing up critical business data. It is vitally important to be able to maintain continuity and customer service in the wake of a natural disaster.”

Acronis highlighted the importance of backing up data and having disaster plans in place to ensure a quick recovery after a serious threat.

According to Scoop.co.nz, a recent survey by Acronis shows that just 22% of Australian businesses felt that they would be able to recover quickly in the event of downtime, compared to a global average of 50%.

And, a further concern is that a third of local businesses (36%) do not have a backup and disaster recovery strategy in place.

Until recently, the ultimate solution to avoid significant disaster was to build an offsite disaster recovery centre, with an ultra-high-speed link to the disaster recovery facility and provisioned with duplicate computing equipment and added staff, writes PR Wire.

Fortunately for SMEs, it is now easier to achieve the same level of data protection enjoyed by large organisations with the advent of the latest imaging, virtualisation and cloud services.