Welcome to the new year - is your business continuity plan in place?

The newest edition of our newsletter can be found here. This is the Notes from the GM page. 


It’s hard to believe but we’re more than halfway through the first month of 2010! IT spending and concerns typically take a dip in late December through the holidays and then pick up in the first quarter. IT budgets should now be in place and plans for the year set in motion.


A review of the Business Continuity Plan (also known as Disaster Recovery Plan) should be part of the planning for every organization at least annually. If your business did not review a disaster recovery plan in 2009 or does not have one planned for 2010, here’s a reminder to plan!
Google Apps and other cloud applications can make recovery from a disaster a more streamlined process, but a written plan is the best way to ensure a business will survive in the event of a disaster. For SMBs, the plan doesn’t have to be a time-consuming ordeal or overly structured. Larger organizations have staff dedicated to recovery and continuity, a luxury SMBs simply cannot afford.


Backup!


The most important component of a Business Continuity Plan is ensuring that all electronic data is both secure and backed up regularly. The definition of regularly depends on business needs. It can mean everything from real time mirroring at a remote site (cost prohibitive for most SMBs based on risk) to monthly backups with a copy stored off-site. The days of a monthly backup even for a home based business are nearing an end with the advent of low-priced, scheduled internet backups.


In addition to backing up electronic data, the loss of paper records must also be accounted for in business continuity. If a business cannot function without those hard copies, storing copies of that paper off-site must be a part of the plan.
As the price of broadband has decreased, more Internet dependent businesses are installing broadband from multiple vendors to alleviate the single point of failure in the cable or phone company. One popular way of doing this is to use a cable modem as the primary broadband pipe with a slower, less expensive DSL installation as a backup.


Other Business Continuity Issues


This is also a good time to think about critical employees and cross-training staff. When the only employee who knows a system, process or part of the business wins the lottery, what are you going to do to keep going while you replace them? Preemptive cross-training can save many lost hours and dollars in the event of the loss of a critical employee for any reason. Who knows what should be part of the plan. 

A review of insurance policies is also recommended for any size business.


Disaster Recovery Audits


Part of On-Site Technical Solutions practice is providing Disaster Recovery audits to businesses with between five and 500 seats. We can provide an initial, free audit to determine gaps in business continuity. Please feel free to call or text me (1-949-212-2168) with any questions or to set up a time to discuss your business needs.
You should follow me and On-Site Technical Solutions on Twitter at @MHBoys


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Move to Online Backups (if you haven't already)!

The price of online backups are now low enough that almost every home and business should have one. Our vendor, iBackup, now offers up to 10GB of storage for $9.95 a month, a fraction of what that much space cost early last year.

If your business doesn't currently have a regualar backup process in place, you're not a client of On-Site Technical Solutions. Backups are the central component of any business continuity plan. Without a functional backup, disaster recovery and business continuity are not possible in the event of a disaster. Remote storage is also a critical component, which is what makes the Internet backups so attractive, especially at the new price points. Internet backups are also cost effective for home networks now that the home computer is a repository for critical as well as sentimental family data (financial and legal information, photos and scanned documents).

In earlier posts we reommended using laptop drives for local backups. We still encourage that, but the safest, easiest way to backup is now over the Internet.

Backing up Exchange and SQL is actually cheaper through the Internet (at least with On-Site Technical Solutions) because the software to handle those databases is included in the cost of the backup. Creating local backups of those specialized databases requires relatively expensive backup software and renewals.

The On-Site Technical Solutions iBackup site can be found here.

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On-Site Technical Solutions
iBackup
online backup
Internet backup
Exchange backup
SQL backup
backup

Move to Online Backups!

The price of online backups have come down so much in the last six months that we recommend them to our entire customer base. Our vendor, iBackup, now offers up to 10GB of storage for $9.95 a month, a fraction of what that much space cost early this year.

If your business doesn't currently have a regualar backup process in place, you're not a client of On-Site Technical Solutions. Backups are the central component of any business continuity plan. Without a functional backup, disaster recovery and business continuity are not possible in the event of a disaster. Remote storage is also a critical component, which is what makes the Internet backups so attractive, especially at the new price points. Internet backups are also cost effective for home networks now that the home computer is a repository for critical as well as sentimental family data (financial and legal information, photos and scanned documents).

In earlier posts we reommended using laptop drives for local backups. We still encourage that, but the safest, easiest way to backup is now over the Internet.

Backing up Exchange and SQL is actually cheaper through the Internet (at least with On-Site Technical Solutions) because the software to handle those databases is included in the cost of the backup. Creating local backups of those specialized databases requires relatively expensive backup software and renewals.

The On-Site Technical Solutions iBackup site can be found here.

On-Site Technical Solutions
iBackup
online backup
Internet backup
Exchange backup
SQL backup
backup