Your corporate data is a strategic asset. If it’s improperly managed, it can become a significant liability. I'll be providing you today some of my views to address this challenge by using managed services.

Businesses today must address the dual challenges of safely storing and protecting their corporate data at a time when the mere quantity of the information they generate and consume daily has grown exponentially. Added to that burden is the fact that IT budgets are not keeping up with the needs and are under great scrutiny for cost savings and efficiencies.

Data protection has become a business imperative now more so than ever before and the failure to properly manage and safeguard corporate data can result in business disruption, devastating losses or the potential downfall of the business itself. 

The facts are startling: 24% of companies have experienced a major data loss, and 70% of companies that experience a major data loss go out of business within one year. 

• Is your Company data safe?
• Are you sure it is being backed up regularly and successfully? 
• How sound is your recovery strategy?

Organizations today understand how critical data recovery has become and that their IT Teams need to execute flawless backups to ensure data recovery. Service level agreements with all lines of business are essential and need to be met. Depending on the size of the organization, on premise backup and recovery can sometimes be an afterthought and therefore if not in place, it can lead to service interruption. Are your backups managed and administered by a technician who typically has many other responsibilities and a lot on his plate? If yes, are you absolutely sure your data is being backed up successfully as often as required?  

Ways to improve your Backup and Recovery Strategy

1.Backup Health Check

First, I’d recommend you find an organization that specializes in backup and recovery / data protection to assist you with a health check service. This will ensure all backup and recovery policies meet the needs of your business and that corporate data is actually recoverable.

The Benefits:

This is a low cost service that will:

• Confirm that backups are meeting corporate-defined SLAs
• Help in the creation of a corporate backup policy
• Test data and restore capabilities

2.On Premise Backup Admin Support

Find a Managed Services organization where you can offload the day to day admin responsibility of the on premise backup and recovery environment. 

The Benefits:

• Typically a reasonable monthly fee (Utility Model)
• The administration will be conducted remotely by level 2-3 backup and recovery specialists
• It will allow you to focus on core business applications knowing that your data is secure and recoverable
• The remote backup and recovery specialist becomes an extension of your IT team without the burden of an additional fulltime head count that you are not likely able to budget for.

3. Off Premise Cloud Backup 

Many Cloud backup providers claim to provide backup and recovery at questionable, if not too good to be true pricing models. You need to be sure that the organization’s core expertise you select is backup and recovery, and that they have many years experience or, solid references. 

You also need to ask yourself:
Where is my data being stored? Canadian businesses should be looking for a cloud backup provider located in Canada that also stores data in this country. 
What kind of facility is being used for their data center? The answer is a Tier 3 or Tier-4 data center. 

The Benefits:

• A monthly fee typically based at a lower cost than supporting an on premise environment
• Cloud Backup removes hardware, software and service costs from your organization
• In most cases, Cloud Backup will increase the reliability and availability of the data being backed up.

Why do companies adopt managed services?

Organizations of all sizes are looking to trusted managed service providers to address a range of issues around cost, quality of service and risk. Some of the key benefits to enlisting an MSP include the following:

Cost reduction
Economies of scale and automation of service delivery enable managed service providers to meet a lower cost point than most organizations can achieve internally. 

Better service levels and reduced risk
Service quality is the ultimate value that a managed service provider can offer and it’s backed by contractual SLAs. They typically see problems that in-house IT staff may come across only once or twice—and they know how to resolve them or, even better, to anticipate them and prevent disruptions proactively.

Flexibility and scalability to adapt to changing business conditions. 
Service providers can scale the scope, size and range of managed services based on a client’s business needs. This allows clients to better align IT with business requirements and speed time to market with fast provisioning of new resources.

The end result for you, the client, is a stable, dependable and protected IT environment that can meet the service availability and performance expectations of end users at a reasonable price.

At Sentia, we are proud of being considered trusted partners by our customers by helping them be successful and grow. Our core expertise is data, and we can help map out a plan that is right for your business and your budget.

Related Resources:

Visit our Managed Services Virtual Resource Center
Read our white paper: Managed Services and the Bottom Line – The Dollars and Sense of Outsourced IT.

Call me or drop me a line to discuss your challenges and let me help you drive more value from your IT spending!

Chris Charette, Vice President Services
1-866-610-8489
Sentia