Maintaining IT availability can be particularly challenging for SMEs, says Rick Vanover, senior manager of product strategy at Veeam.
This is because while SMEs have many of the same needs as larger businesses, they have fewer resources with which to fulfil them, Vanover explained at the VeeamON 2015 data centre availability conference in Las Vegas.
Because SMEs are likely to have far fewer IT staff than larger businesses, individual IT managers in SMEs are commonly vexed with "multiple hat syndrome" in having to fulfil the roles of what in a larger business would be a number of IT managers or departments, Vanover continued.
IT managers in SMEs often find themselves juggling business decision-making and infrastructure planning with being elbows-deep in hardware, he noted, suggesting the pressure of multi-tasking makes focusing on maintaining availability more difficult. Because of this, ease of use is an especially high priority for SMEs where IT infrastructure is concerned.
Complicated and unpredictable pricing structures can also represent a significant burden to SMEs. It is important for SMEs to be able to make changes to their data centres, and add and remove applications without having to consider incurring major costs, he said.
While a comparative lack of financial and human resources can be a burden to SMEs, the upside of having a smaller business is having less data, Vanover noted.
"Big data, big problems," is a popular adage, he said, explaining that the more data a business has, the more difficult it is to protect, manage and move. Large volumes of data can be "almost impossible to back up".
With simple and manageable pricing models and architecture that can be deployed and understood quickly and with little complication, SMEs can cope with the challenges of having fewer staff while enjoying the flexibility of having less data, Vanover concluded.
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