How valuable is your Business data ?

Businesses are becoming increasingly dependant upon their data and whether you’re a multinational corporation or a local SME you rely on your business data to function. However business data is constantly under threat from virus attacks, security loop holes, equipment failure or even complete loss of data from fire & theft, which means added pressure to ensure that your business critical information is protected.

The increased use in technology has also played a major part in data protection risks. More and more data is now stored, information about customers, invoices, business financial state is all stored within the companies IT systems.

The SME market can be hit hardest when data loss occurs:

• Limited IT resources for backup and recovery
• All business critical data stored on one server
• Business critical applications running on one server
• Downtime and disruptions caused can have an immediate effect on
  business and sales

So how can the SME best ensure that their critical data is protected?

Determine what data is critical to the business

In order to start thinking about how you can protect your data you must recognise what data you need to protect. It is not always just the documents stored on your file server. What about email? Or any business applications or databases which run on the server. Any internet sites or ecommerce sites? Where is the information which you require to do your day to day activities?

Think about how you can locate your data offsite

Even if you have the most effective tape backup solution in place and never miss a backup if all your data is stored onsite what happens in the event theft or fire? Think about how to best get data offsite, have you got remote offices? can you store the data offsite in storage? Sometimes just having a backup is not enough.

Calculate the impact that downtime will have on your business

Try and calculate the cost of downtime for each application or data that you identified in step 1. Once you have done this you can begin to calculate the Recovery Time required. For example if your business critical database fails what kind of service level agreement do you need (SLA) 4 hour response time, 8 hour response time? Once you know the cost of the downtime it is easier to justify the cost of the SLA support contract.

A simple downtime formula:

Productivity Impact + Revenue Impact = Downtime Estimate

Look at the best way to implement your backup solution

Once you have identified what data is important to your business, the impact of downtime and the Recovery time required you are then able to start looking for the appropriate solution. Dependent upon the information gathered in the previous steps this may be:

• Disk to disk solution
• Tape backup solution
• Offsite backup
• Server to
• server backup solution

Remember it is important to work the technology into the business, so the solution supports the business.

Ensure you are able to recover your data

With any disaster recovery plan it is essential that you are able to recover your data effectively. Disaster recovery plans must be documented and tested to ensure that the theory works in practise. Also constant monitoring of your day to day backups must be in place to ensure that if the worst does happen you have the data available to recover from. Many businesses have experienced a nasty shock when they go to their backup tape only then realising that their backup has not been working correctly for the past six weeks.

What questions to ask a potential IT service provider?

Sometimes it can be confusing for a startup business trying to decide how to invest in IT and whos advice to trust (there is a lot of information out there).

Business Link offers some great advice to companies looking for a new IT supplier and is a good starting place for new companies. Some of the questions you should be thinking about when choosing a provider..

• Can the supplier provide all the hardware, software, services, support and maintenance you need?
• Will they install and configure your system so it is fully operational?
• Will they train your staff?
• What frontline support can they provide? Do they have a telephone helpdesk?
• Will they take responsibility for system components purchased elsewhere?
• What sort of maintenance contracts do they provide?
• What exactly is included in their supply contract?
• What warranty is provided?
• Will they continue to provide support if you take responsibility for replacing faulty hardware yourself?
• Will they consider any form of payment scheme linked to the benefits you receive from your system?
• Are upgrades and fixes to software included?
• Can they provide references from other, similar companies they've helped in the past?
• Will they provide you with written documentation that will help you understand your system?
• Do they show an understanding of your business needs? Do they have experience in your industry?

Our response to the questions raised by Business Link can be found at our forum