Nearly every business today relies on computer systems and the data they produce to run their business. Often however, the value of that data isn't realized until a disaster hits and the business tries to run without it. Imagine for a moment what daily operations of your business would be if all your customer information were lost. Could your business survive? What would it cost your business in downtime, employee time and lost opportunities.
Let's look at a quick scenerio of what it could cost a small business that lost its data.
Business Profile:
Industry: Engineering
Annual Revenue: $2,000,000
Number of Employees using computers: 10
Disaster Recovery Plan in place: No
Most recent backup: 45 days
Reliance on computers & company data: High
Scenerio:
The company's server holds their Line of Business applications which processes all of their work orders, purchasing and billing. It also holds their Quickbooks financial data. Essentially all business activities stop when they can't access their data. Because the business doesn't have a documented disaster recovery program in place it takes their IT company 3 days to recover the data:
Day 1 - Diagnose the problem and install new hard drive
Day 2 - Reinstall operating system and applications
Day 3 - Reconfigure applications and workstations
Their most recent backup was over a month old. The cost to this business to recover from the crashed hard-drive breaks down as follows:
Revenue lost due to downtime - $23,076 (based on revenue generated per hour)
Data recovery costs - $5,120 (time to recover the server & reenter 45 days of lost data)
Total Cost of Data Loss - $28,197
This cost doesn't take into consideration any data that can't be keyed back into the system, client disatisfaction during the downtime nor general hassles of having the business flow interrupted for 3 days.
What should your business do to avoid such problems? We have 4 key actions every business should take to minimize the chance of downtime and be able to recover from it without data loss if it happens.
1. Employ Good Hardware - Avoid Downtime by having a proper lifecycle replacement plan for aging hardware and ensuring all data is stored on a system that has redundant storage capabilities. What does this really mean...replace your server every 3-4 years and make sure you have mulitple hard drives on your server which replicate the data between them. There are many other things you can do to keep from having any downtime but these make a good starting point.
2. Develop a Disaster Recovery Plan - A disaster recovery plan identifies what data is critical, how it's backed up and what is necessary to completely restore the data. This can be a 2 page document or 20 pages depending on your business needs.
3. Implement a Solid Backup System - There are 3 keys to a good backup system. The first is that it must be automatic. Any backup system that requires human intervention is highly prone to failure. Second, the backup system must have an off-site component. If the building were to experience a fire the data needs to be off site so it can still be recovered. Third, the backup system should be capable of keeping at least 10 previous backups. There are times when data becomes corrupted and the corruption isn't identified for several days requiring a restore of data to several days back.
4. Test the Plan - In all my years of IT work I've found only a handful of businesses that have actually tested their plan (most don't even have one). On the the other hand, I've had dozens of companies call when a disaster occurs for help recovering data they don't even know if they have a backup of. An untested Disaster Recovery Plan is nothing more then a good idea.
When it comes to your data it's not a matter of if your hardware will fail but when and how much, if any, data you'll loose. Taking action today can keep your company running smoothly and ensure a rapid recovery with no data loss when disaster hits. For help with this or any other technology related needs call us for a free consultation. To download a pdf on our Disaster Recovery Solution for your business click here.