Our grand children will share with their great children how we looked and talked and how we moved and expressed ourselves... most of us will have those memories, saved in some form or fashion, from our youth!
How I wish I could see my grand parents or their parents - young and hear their voices. I'd like to see how they sounded and see their personalities! I have stories... like a thousand generations before me... of how everyone was and how my great grand parents lived, told by my grandparents and my mom and dad and aunts and uncles and that's cool - my mind fills in the blanks of the details quite nicely - but our legacy will digital... maybe for a thousand generation forward... our descendants will know more about us than any generation before.
Now all of that is important and I suspect will play a much bigger part of history than anything else, but today - in the hear and the now - data is about business! Those bits and bites are valuable and the business of backing up your data is big!
Even small businesses that as recently as the mid-2000's weren't worried about data loss - a small SD card or thumb drive stored most of their important data - have started to implement data back solutions and protocols that run those solutions. A business used to have very little data that really needed to be backed up - Quick books and maybe a few key Microsoft office docs were all most businesses concerned themselves with.
Now; however, data creation is growing faster than ever... we're saving lots and lots of images. We're scanning more and more documents - like, multi-page contracts, faxes and medical records, we're archiving movies, music, and pictures. Our email in-box and our archiving of those emails and those attachments that ride along with them is growing exponentially, and because we are saving so much... we're creating such a huge treasure trove of information... that just by the simple passage of time, naturally, means more and more data is being created and stored.
Also the importance of all that stored information - and it's value - is just starting to be realized by the small to medium size business owner.
There is also the new realization... keeping all that data safe and accessible is becoming ever more critical to the success and health of the small to medium size businesses; along with laws such as HIPPA, that require medical providers to keep their data safe, accessible and secure... now can carry legal ramifications for not doing so.
Add to that what the National Archives & Records Administration in Washington, D.C. had to say recently about a very scary statistic that happens to businesses that experience a catastrophic data loss:
93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more due to some type of disaster,
failure to properly back up their data or data loss by other means, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the catastrophic data loss event, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately!
failure to properly back up their data or data loss by other means, filed for bankruptcy within one year of the catastrophic data loss event, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately!
That's scary!
As the importance of data and its security grows, the limitations of what we've traditional used as data back up devices are starting to show their weaknesses. Some of these traditional back up solutions are:
- Tape Back-Up Systems
- SD Cards & thumb Drives
- CD's & DVD's
Sometime it's not just the hardware that fails, though tape drives are very labor intensive, not only to back up to, but also to maintain in good working condition. No, it seems the major point of failure in all data back-up systems is human error!
Many times, since all of these back-up processes require someone to perform the task of actually doing the back up, even just one missed or forgotten day of doing the work of backing up - for a decent size business - will cause serious gaps in the back up archives!
Human error, combined with fundamental flaws of most current back-up technologies, make backing up data a less than reliable process. The weaknesses of current data back up systems is that they are:
- People Dependent - People forget or just plain don't do it
- A Manual Process - Requiring swapping of tape, CD, DVD, SD or USB thumb drives
- Media That is Fragile or Easily Lost
- Lacking Proper Follow Through to Make Sure That Data is Really Being Backed Up
- Not Tested
Each one of these mentioned weaknesses can cause real issues to your ability to recover your data fully and completely, but many times multiple infractions happen - at the same time - that take a bad situation and make it infinitely worse! For example, the person in charge of backing up the data has forgotten or missed placed one or two days of back ups, combined that with a downed or damaged server (a main reason to try to recover your data) and a complete recovery can be almost impossible.
Another weakness of current back up solutions is that they cannot provide access to Incremental changes (that is different version of a document throughout the day). Incremental versions of documents and the archiving of those changes to the documents are what more businesses are looking for when protecting their information. Changes to documents throughout the day can be accessed and recovered. Even if a document is saved in it's final mode on your hard drive... a back up solution that implements incremental back ups can give a business access to data at different times through out the day.
So we need a solution that can eliminate most - if not all human interaction - can work automatically, can store incremental changes to documents through a work day and can also send data off to a remote location. Sending data off to remote locations is always a good these days... hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and floods can and will destroy your hardware along with all of your data and can also affect a specific region (as many of us here in Houston found after hurricane Ike).
A solution that Convergex is offering is just such a solution; however our data back up solution brings two more important and very powerful components to your data back protocol: One is not only the ability to back up all your data and their incrementals throughout the day, but also to have a complete "snapshot" of ALL of your programs as well. In other words, not only will our solution back up your data, but also all of your Microsoft operating system programs and Quickbooks and SQL and so on. All of your information is captured!
The second powerful feature that our solution brings to a company is that the technology that we install will also act as a back up server. If your SQL server crashes or your Exchange Server fails, we can - from anywhere in the world - program our back up solution to act as your back server as well; and all that can be done in about an hour from your catastrophic event. so in the event of a hardware failure our server will have you accessing all your email or your data in less than one hour... now that's true business continuity! Believe it or not all of this and more can be installed in a business today for less than $2500.00.
Protecting our data is such a crucial part of our lives that it almost seems silly to leave it up to a thumb drive or a flimsy SD card to safeguard it. For businesses, data is our life blood today!
For our future; however, it's so much more, as our great grand children and their great grand children a 150 years from now will take their optical (sugar cube size) drives holding 100's of zettabytes of pictures, video, and ancient data, and place that optical data storage device on a platform while some type of laser scans it and then it's projected in perfect full size 3D reality for them to watch in awe and wonder and make fun of their ancient and oh so silly ancestors, but will be infinitely grateful that they then can share that with their great children.
Click to learn more on our Data Back Up & Disaster Recovery solution and how it can help your business. Click on this link to learn more about Convergex Communications and all our products and offerings.
