We have all heard the horror stories of simple mistakes that lead to costly business disasters. It seems like every day on the news we hear about the next recall or outage that leads to the need for public relations to clean up the mess. More often than not, the damage is too great to overcome and that company which suffered the IT disaster is unable to recover.
Planning for the unknown and unlikely can be difficult, but having enough funds to implement an IT disaster recovery plan can seem close to impossible. Often, companies are faced with more pressing issues to their business than something that may or may not happen, or so they think, which is why we hear about these stories on the news quite frequently. But, how unlikely is it that an IT disaster could happen to your company? With the combination of natural disasters, hardware failures and human error, the reality is that data loss is only a matter of when, not if.
According to an NFIB National Small Business Poll, man-made disasters affect 10% of all small businesses, and a staggering 30% have been impacted by natural disasters. A simple power outage could put your whole business at risk. In fact, research by the University of Texas has shown that only 6% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss survive, 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years.
Gartner estimates that two out of five businesses that experience disaster will go out of business in five years. "Enterprises can improve those odds - but only if they take necessary measures before and after the disaster." - Source, Gartner
In the South African context, the fact is too many companies don't protect their technology infrastructure and data simply because small to medium businesses both in the private and public domain simply cannot afford to spend on disaster recover and business continuity. The available solutions in the market are either very expensive or don't meet the required business objectives. And hence they let it slide...hoping that everything will be fine.
Even if they back up their data, a lot of companies find getting it back can be problematic: fewer than one-third of companies with a disaster recovery plan have ever bothered testing it to make sure it still works. What would happen if one day all business data was gone? Unforeseeable events such as fires, hardware failures or theft happen every day to businesses. The key to a successful recovery will be determined by how prepared you are today.
Ever increasing cost pressures have put major strain on organisations' IT budgets and more and more businesses have put their operations at risk by not investing in disaster recover solutions. Hence, affordable and reliable DR solutions that fit the business's needs are essential.
From a public sector perspective; for many years now, the Auditor General has been advising local and provincial governments to look into the aspects of business continuity and disaster recovery. The Auditor General's reports year after year highlight the importance of having reliable disaster management strategies and tools for government.
The fact is, very little is done at the local government and municipality levels to address this important issue. Recent Auditor General reports show that less than 10% of municipalities have any kind of IT control mechanisms in place, out of which less than 3% have any measures around disaster recovery or backup. The problems faced by most small to medium municipalities are related to availability of funds to spend on expensive disaster recovery solutions; and finding a balance between spending the same funds on local development.
Hence, the need of the hour is a simple, affordable and reliable solution that can address disaster recovery needs for small to medium businesses.
In4Group's DR in a Box makes disaster planning, implementation and testing of your valuable business data easy. Different from a standard file backup, the disaster recovery solution backs up a mirror image of your entire computer/server, including the operating system and software.
Standard file backups can take days to rebuild and could be incomplete, but with an image backup, the recovery takes only hours and is 100% complete. The company's DR in a Box leverages cutting-edge Forge Platespin technology from NetIQ, hosted on scalable, state-of-the-art infrastructure from Atrust and powered by The Cloud Company.
In4Group launched this breakthrough concept called "DR in a Box" at the IT Leaders Africa Summit; which is sure to redefine the disaster recovery and business continuity planning marketplace by make the solutions more affordable and reliable to clients in the medium to small market segments.
For more details regarding DR in a Box, contact Deepak Belur on deepak@in4group.com.
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