subject: Online Backup Service Adoption In The Irish Sme Sector [print this page] The population of Ireland is approximately 4.25 million, and of those almost 50% are employed, with 750,000 employed in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector. This sector is made up of of businesses which employ 40 people or less and cover all enterprises not governmental or agricultural in nature. These businesses functioning correctly has a huge impact on the economy as a whole.
Even the smallest of the small businesses rely to a large extent on computers and the internet means that all company correspondence are stored on a computer hard drive. This exposes them to a very realrisk of catastrophic loss of information in the case of disasters such as fire, flood or theft. Such disasters are, fortunately, rare. However, there are other ways in which an individual or SME can suffer a catastrophic loss of data: viruses, hardware malfunctions and negligence or sheer incompetence on the part of the operator, can wipe out data.
It is, therefore, imperative to have a reliable system to backup all data on company computers. The most common method has been tapes on which all documents are recorded once a day and the tapes kept for a week. Its common for the tapes are stored next to the computer (albeit usually in a fire-proof box), exposing both to the same risks of fire or natural disasters.
The system works in most cases of hard drive failure, but research has shown two facts: while data is recovered, in seventy five percent of the cases studied, data recovery was only partial; and more alarmingly, 50% of which suffer a total loss of data, do not survive.
The current trend is towards online backup in which backup data is kept off-site by companies dedicated to disaster recovery. Online backup offers several advantages over the old style tapes in terms of safe storage, very high recovery rate, and the ability to download the data to any computer, making reloading data on a new computer extremely simple. In addition, the data is continuously uploaded so that you are protected against loss of data between scheduled tape backups.
Certainly, the growth of companies offering online backup services to Irish small business (including the sending of recovery data via private networks) suggests that,large companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, and even individuals, will be entrusting their data to online backup systems.
by: Trenton v jones
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