If Backup Isn't Easy, It Won't Work: 8 Noble Truths

To help organizations better understand the challenges of backup, disaster recovery and secure access, Acronis has created the "8 Noble Truths" of data protection. To view all 8 Noble Truths, please download the whitepaper. This is the final post in an eight-part series to help you protect your data:

Data is critical to a business's performance, but since IT professionals have many jobs, they don't have all day to be thinking about backup and recovery systems — that is, if the business has any specialized IT staff at all. Many small businesses lack a dedicated IT team and instead turn to employees to handle backup in addition to their designated tasks. Whether IT is constantly busy or doesn't formally exist, companies need a backup solution that's easy, reliable and seamless.

A prime example of a company that demands quick, easy solutions is Ashby Cross Company, a manufacturer of adhesive and fluid dispensing equipment. Since it's a small company — only 20 people — the general manager, who has an engineering background, heads up IT efforts. Data protection isn't his primary job, so data protection must be fast, simple and easy for employees to implement. Any slip-ups in the backup process could cost the company not only its data but precious time spent recovering the data.

“Recovery is typically a very stressful time for IT professionals," says Sergey Kandaurov, director of product management at Acronis. "The stakes are high, jobs are on the line and IT often has frantic executives asking why the company-wide email system went down, or why sensitive financial information disappeared. It’s also impossible to predict when a data disaster will occur. If it happens in the middle of the night, the IT admin responsible for recovery will be dragged out of bed to recover the system immediately for employees halfway around the world who can’t get work done. In these situations, easy is critical.”

To successfully restore data, IT needs simple technologies that can handle complex tasks seamlessly. Solutions should provide simple and concise instructions on how to manage the recovery process, so that any employee can handle crisis situations as if he's a seasoned professional. Data protection methods that don’t meet these expectations simply won’t work. A data backup system that doesn't work means the data — and potentially the entire business — is on the line. 

Read more:

•       Data is Everything (Noble Truth #1)
•       Data is Increasingly Difficult to Back Up (Noble Truth #2)
•       Disasters Are Inevitable; Data Loss Doesn’t Have to Be (Noble Truth #3)
•       Modern Data Requires New Generation Data Protection (Noble Truth #4) 
•       Disk Imaging Provides Fast and Complete Protection (Noble Truth #5)
•       Data Protection Is Truly About Fast, Reliable Recovery (Noble Truth #6)
•       When Choosing a Data Protection Technology, Remember: Flexibility Matters (Noble Truth #7)

Image via Can Stock Photo