Smart Backup Solutions & How It Can Help Lower Your Costs

The online and offline worlds are abuzz with everything and anything about the latest superhero movie so give this entry the chance to touch on the Avengers discussion a little bit by reminiscing a previous film.

One of the best moments of “Captain America: The Winter Solider” was when the red, white and blue superhero was confronted by an old enemy from the Second World War, whose essence “lives” in the reel to reel computer tapes and backup drives of a bygone era.

Of course, the movie is fictional because how can an archaic system like that do the job of a sophisticated system. Certainly, a backup system that old will not be able to store data, much more the brain of a mad scientist that can actually engage in a conversation with live, breathing human beings. It was the kind of technology that is higher than artificial intelligence because that was real intelligence stored in a system.

But in reality, how do we backup data? Traditional ways point to disks and tape backup which can be time consuming. Other ways are hybrid cloud backup and direct-to-cloud backup, which are smarter solutions to backup data.

Why are they called smart solutions?

Here are some major differences between traditional and intelligent backup options for you and your business to consider.

Recovery Time

Let’s says you were hacked or because of technical issues and loss of power, you are facing a crisis of a major loss of data. How long can your business be down before you start losing your on-line customer base and begin seeing “red ink” flowing into your corporate register? If you were using “reel to reel” tapes and traditional backups, it could take up to several weeks to recover your online presence. An intelligent backup solution can today recover your data in a matter of hours, minutes and sometimes calculated in nano-seconds. Isn’t that worth the price of bringing your data back from the computer “stone age”?

Automation

When computer backups were launched, they came with seemingly endless reams of books and manuals to rife through. This can cause a high rise of data failure if you need to rely on human data input. Traditional backups rely on heavy manual administration which results in a high risk of failure. Fully automated backups require less administration and therefore, is a decreased risk of error. After human failure comes breakdowns in hardware and even service room failures. Environmental disasters including wind, solar storms or earthquakes can cause massive data interruptions and system failures. You do not want to be leafing through voluminous paper trails to recover your data.

Testing

It’s nearly impossible to give a test to an encyclopedia let alone keep up with the never-ending flow of data that even the smallest companies can generate on a daily basis. Intelligent backups can employ flash, image-based screenshots taken automatically to verify the success of each daily (or hourly). This can be done at 2:32 a.m. when you are sound asleep and likewise provide your company with genuine peace of mind … 24/7.

Speed

Even Captain America can see that the backup speeds of today are “light years” ahead of traditional backup technology. Speed wins – hands down!

Critical Data

When the wheels turn in traditional backups, it is impossible to prioritize your critical data. Just look at those wheels turn! Intelligent backup solutions can allow for time-sensitive data to be transferred off-site first which makes retrieval near instantaneous.

Backup Location(s)

You are left with few (if any) choices of venues with traditional backups. Generally, its within your company’s premises which when the system crashes can create chaos on a moment’s notice. With modern day intelligent backup solutions, you canstore data locally and in the secure cloud in a location that may be on the other sideof the planet. A rule to live by: Protect your data at all cost as doing so protects the lifeblood of your organization.

Encryption

Traditional backup solutions offer almost no encryption or at a very basic level depending on your industry and its initial security protocols.

Not good!

Intelligent backup solutions utilize AES 256 and SSL key-based encryption that not only gives peace of mind but protects your data at rest and while in transit from your business servers through and into the cloud which ensures that data is safe both at rest and in transit.

Savings

Should there be a natural disaster, or thieves break into your company at 3: a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning, the data recovery options from traditional servers are quitelimited and you will be spending copious amounts of funds to bring in third-party security providers to help your staff in recover the stolen data tapes. With intelligent backup solutions, your business can continue humming along which adds up to incalculable savings.