Five Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Consider Online Backup Services

I think most small business owners have some idea of the importance of backing up their computer data. However, since their IT budgets are limited, they don't usually get the same level of protection that a professional IT operation would provide for a larger business. Online backup provides small businesses and even home offices professional quality data backup services at very reasonable costs.

Here are five clear reasons why small businesses should consider online backup systems.

1) Offsite Storage - Online backup services by their nature store data off site. Tape and other media-based local backup solutions require an additional, and manual, effort to move backup copies of data to off site locations. The procedures and human efforts required to transport and store backup data off-site are often complex, expensive, error prone, and inconvenient.

2) Security - Professional online backup services always encrypt backup data. The better services also store the data in encrypted form. And some of the better online backup service providers use private key encryption methods so that even their own engineers and technicians have no access to the contents of your backup files. There are numerous examples of backup tapes, CD's, and portable devices turning up lost or stolen and exposing thousands of customer and employee records to potential identity thieves.

3) Consistency - Manual procedures and human intervention are the source of inconsistent data backups. Online backup systems are the most automated that you can get. In most cases there are absolutely no manual procedures to be neglected, skipped, or forgotten.

4) Simplicity - Online backup is much simpler than other solutions because you don't need to set up any hardware or complex software. In addition there is no media to be handled or manual procedures. Most online backup services require a subscription and a simple piece of software that is downloaded from a website.

5) Cost - Online backup services are much less expensive than traditional backup technology. You save the upfront costs of hardware, software, and media. And then you continue to save on the ongoing maintenance and cost of ownership of the system. Furthermore, there is no additional expense involved in transporting and maintaining backup data in an offsite storage location. Online backup also requires very little human resource time to setup, monitor, and operate.

There is no reason why a small business should have a less robust data backup system than a larger organization. A good online backup service provides enterprise quality data backup service at an affordable price.

It's Not Just The Data

A lot of businesses, especially small businesses, backup their data to protect against a disaster but they don't plan for the possibility that their offices and equipment may be destroyed or inaccessible. For the sake of discussion, let's say that you are one of the smarter business managers and your data is backed up daily and current copies are stored off site. And let's go one more step and say that your procedures are monitored and you do periodic test restores to make sure your data can be recovered. If your office burned to the ground, would you be able to restore your data and operate your business from an alternate location?

You are certainly much better off because your data is backed up and available to be restored, however, you may not have planned to be down for days while you locate an alternate facility and equipment. I am not suggesting that you need to have a backup office location and equipment ready to take over. Although, that might be appropriate for some businesses. I am suggesting that you go through the exercise of thinking out a realistic scenario and how long it would actually take you to get back in business. How much would it cost if your office were completely down and offline for a week? Three weeks? Some businesses would not survive. Some would not suffer any lasting effects from this type of outage. Every business should think this out and have a plan for how to recover. Maybe your data backups are sufficient. Maybe you need a standby server in an off site location. Maybe you need a backup telephone system.

Off site copies of current backup data is usually the minimum. Each business is different and will have different requirements, but the requirements often go beyond backup data requirements. It all depends on the how much the business would suffer if a major office were offline for an extended period of time. If you are a consulting business and your consultants can continue to work without an office, then you may not need much more than data backups. If you are a credit card processor or bank that would immediately lose customers and business as soon as downtime occurs, then it is probably worth spending some money to protect your business against heavy losses.

What about my home videos?

I was talking to a friend, Ed, who has captured hundreds of hours of his family and children on DVC video tape. He is in the process of copying those tapes to the computer and burning them to DVD's. Ed was asking about the appropriate hard disk technology for storing large video files. Large capacity hard disk drives are relatively inexpensive. But anytime I get into a discussion with someone about large capacities of disk storage, I have to bring up the issue of backing up the data.

At first I thought that Ed would consider his DVD's that he burned from the video data to be his backups, but he corrected me on that thought. The data that comes from the tape is about 15-20GB per hour of video. It is compressed, using losy compression when it is burned to a 4.7GB DVD. He want's to keep the original for long term storage. That's pretty good thinking and I would do the same thing. Ed plans to keep his tapes around for backup.

I have a problem with using any tape, or removeable media for that matter, for long-term backup purposes. The DVC tapes are supposed to last forever, but my problem is that it is unlikely that any of us will have any devices that will read those tapes in 10 years. If you have any of the old 8MM video tapes, or Betamax tapes then you know what I mean. So my advice to Ed, is that the tapes are fine for now, but you really need to come up with a better solution for the long haul, and you really need to keep a backup copy off site for safe-keeping.

Online backup is not yet practical for backing up huge amounts of data for home users. Current bandwidth availability in typical homes with DSL, or a cable modem, isn't enough for backing up hundreds of gigabytes of data. So this is one of the cases where I do recommend using an external hard drive to backup your data. Not all of your data, use online backup for your business files, photos, mp3's and everything else, but you are going to need a different solution for large video libraries. The best I can come up with now, is to copy your videos to an external hard drive and store it at a location other than your home.

Unlimited Online Backup

I have seen a few online backup providers offering "unlimited" storage. Sounds like a great deal. But how can they do this? Obviously, they really can't if their customers are backing up large amounts of data. I guess you have to dig into the definition of the word "unlimited". I thought I new the meaning, but just to make sure, I looked it up on dictionary.com. There are 6 different results and they all are like this:

un·lim·it·ed –adjective
1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined: unlimited trade.
2. boundless; infinite; vast: the unlimited skies.
3. without any qualification or exception; unconditional.

My understanding of the meaning was perfectly accurate according to the definitions established in the dictionary. However, some online backup vendors have come up with their own definitions of the word. I think this may root back to the time when US President Bill Clinton explained what appeared to be false statements about his sexual encounters with an intern by defining the meaning of the word "is". When you get into the definition of the word "unlimited" according to online backup providers, you will find that there are in fact limitations, restrictions, bounds, and qualifications; which are in direct conflict with the definition according to the dictionary and our common understanding of the word. I will say however, that they don't exactly state the limits clearly. It is usually something like a "fair-use" policy that says you can't use an unfair amount of storage in relationship to the other users on the system. Isn't that nice; if you want to store lots of stuff then you have to hope that everyone else stores lots of stuff, and you have no idea what the other users are storing. And then, I have to wonder, at what point is everyone storing so much stuff that the online backup provider is losing money and has to shut down or start sticking the customers with higher fees?

Here's the dirty little secret. Online backup providers that offer plans with unlimited storage are more profitable if you don't use a lot of their storage. That's common sense, so they don't want you to stuff their storage systems with your files. Hopefully, you will sign up and only backup a few gigs of data. They have a vested interest in keeping your storage usage down. They have their methods to achieving that result. You may find that your bandwidth gets severely restricted after you have backed up a certain amount of data and your backups get incredibly slow. Or, you may find that certain types of files, are not getting backed up at all. You will almost certainly find that they only retain your backup data for a limited amount of time.

Online backup service providers that charge a fee according the amount of backup storage that you require work on an entirely different model. They want to make it easy for you to backup as much data as you want to, and they want you to be able set the retention for as long as you want. They don't want to restrict you because the more storage you use the more you pay them and the more profitable they are. They actually want you to backup and store more data off site, as opposed to the unlimited offers that want you to backup and store less data.

So here's the trade off: You can control the cost by using an unlimited plan, but you will lose some control over what is backed up and how long it is retained and possibly how fast your back ups will run. Or, you use a pay as you go plan and you have more control over what gets backed up and how long it is retained, but you will not have a fixed cost. I personally prefer the online backup providers where you pay for what you need. The more you backup the more they like you. As opposed to unlimited vendors, where the more you backup the more they don't like you. Can you imagine a bank that prefers that their customers don't deposit much money? I would be uncomfortable putting my money in that bank. I want a bank that wants me to deposit a lot of money, and I want an online backup provider that wants me to deposit a lot of backup data!