In my experience, I find that most small business owners I talk to about disaster recovery still cling to their medieval DR mindsets and myths that quite frankly belong in debates among King Arthur and his knights of the round table.
Fortunately we are no longer in the dark ages of Disaster Recovery. With the onset of cloud computing, DR has become more efficient and affordable than ever. Here are three DR myths that will soon be part of IT folklore.
Myth #1 – Tape Backups are the best DR solution!
Introduced in the 50’s, tape was revolutionary. And for decades it did the job. Tape was a life saver at the time but it also failed in far too many cases. Even modern tape drives are prone to failure. Tape remains a manual and intensive process, and prone to human error.
While tape backup is better than nothing, many of today’s DR providers will backup your data offsite in the cloud, far away from your neighborhood and office. That way, if your business is affected by a disaster, your backup is safe, intact and immediately available to restart your business.
Myth #2 – The RTO you want will be too expensive.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO – how long before I am back in business) is of primary importance to most business owners. And who can blame us. If you’re going to invest in a Disaster Recovery solution, you want to be able to rely on it to recover quickly and on a timetable that won’t damage your business.
In the old days before the cloud, a quick recovery time could cost you well into six figures. Today, tools such as the cloud and virtualization have made this much more affordable, and faster than ever. Most DR providers can backup all your critical data in a matter of minutes. And if you ever need to recover it, most services can do so in hours, rather than days. That’s the power of the cloud. And when it comes to DR, it truly has changed everything.
MYTH #3 – Disaster Recovery is for big business, not SMBs.
Well, it once was. Again, the cloud has really leveled the playing field. And it is making a truly valuable service accessible to businesses of all sizes. From dental offices to small retail operations, SMBs can now easily take advantage of the best DR solutions on market, as the barriers of complexity, costs, and insufficient IT resources no longer apply. Modern IT advances and the cloud have eliminated these obstacles.
These are just three of the common misunderstandings about Disaster Recovery, but enough for you to see how the cloud has made this business saving service more affordable and efficient than ever. We are the Master of Disaster and can safeguard your business with proven business continuity solutions.
Bob Milliken is the president of Cascadia Systems Group. Connect with Bob at TheITguy@CascadiaSystemsGroup.com, or give us a call – 604.270.1730. Your comments are appreciated –ComputerCents@CascadiaSystemsGroup.com
