It's a taboo topic but what happens when stuff goes wrong, like really wrong... Business Continuity to the rescue!
What happens
You cannot access the data held on your servers. Why? Small things like user error, larger things like a server gets a virus and in some extreme cases buildings can burn down.
All of these have the potential to stop you accessing your business data and bring your company to a stop.
OK, so what?
Regardless of the cause there are various costs as a result of downtime and serious disasters; operations stop, sales are lost, compliance penalties, missed deadlines, data loss, potential litigation, permanent damage to reputation.
If you are in this situation the picture isn’t a pretty one. Servers might need replacing, once they arrive they will need to be configured to do the job they were bought for and all the while everyone is looking to you to get this fixed now (handy hint; this normally takes 72 hours at best) and worst of all Janice in accounts (you know, the ‘loud but friendly’ one) is complaining she can’t reconcile her expenses claim for that oh so necessary tub of festive chocolates. The point being once you are here, you are stuck and there is no quick resolution.
Enough with the bad news, what do I do to get rid of this headache?
Business continuity. In short you have the data backed up on premises using a Datto unit (small magical box that does hocus pocus of the good kind). This data is simultaneously backed up to a highly secure ‘cloud’ (Internet storage area) multiple times a day and is then held in an ‘always ready’ but encrypted state – translation can be restored immediately.
Should an issue happen you can restore from the local device or if the incident is further down the Armageddon scale for severity you can restore data from the cloud to a new server.
BUT WAIT, YOU JUST SAID A NEW SERVER TAKES THREE DAYS TO ARRIVE, CONFIGURE AND GET USING??!!
The Datto device, magical properties aside (I can assure you our engineers are very well versed in how Datto units actually work and can confirm they are excellent at what they do) has a very neat trick:
If an issue occurs you can connect straight into the data store in the cloud and continue working as normal.
That's right; as NORMAL. If your office is a smoldering pile of debris, you can rest a little bit more comfortably knowing that the business can keep on moving in temporary premises, the Directors are not pointing fingers at you and Janice can finally claim back that £20 for chocolate and a dodgy heater for under her desk. Wait, she bought a dodgy heater and left it on overnight? At least you can concentrate on the ensuing office gossip and forget about your data as it was never, ever an issue. You had it covered. Gold star for you.
If you like the sound of a worry free solution for your critical data read more here