Challengingly, research shows SMBs don’t have a ‘plan B’ often enough. Why is this important? Simply, no IT system is bulletproof. If it does go down, you need to be able to get it back up – and quickly.
SMBs are also realising they can save themselves significant trouble by implementing backup technologies that allow them to keep their operations running in the event of an outage.
Even as backup has evolved from a luxury to a necessity, other technologies are becoming similarly important. Virtualisation – running ‘virtual machines’ in software on a physical computer – improves IT flexibility. It can reduce costs by avoiding the need to purchase and maintain storage and server hardware that are only needed for times of peak demand. In fact, it improves almost every aspect of IT operations. Virtualisation can also improve an SMB’s ability to respond to outages and its disaster recovery capabilities.
As SMBs increasingly embrace virtualisation, they are forced to manage both a physical and a virtual environment. With more business-critical applications becoming virtualised, IT staff need to deliver the same reliability that users are accustomed to in a physical environment. The best way to bypass this balancing act is by centralising the control over their physical and virtual backups.
A shift in mindset is almost as important as the technology itself in virtualisation adoption. As SMBs move information into virtualised applications, that information, as well as any other data controlled by the business, needs to be organised and protected. A failure to plan adequately will increase the risk of data loss.
To make backup effective in today’s increasingly complex IT environment, businesses need to consider how they can take advantage of common software platforms to streamline processes. This can make it easier to manage backup functions through a centralised dashboard, unifying physical and virtual resources for a systems administrator performing backup and recovery tasks.
To optimise storage and ease the backup task, backup data also needs to be ‘de-duplicated’, with repeated and redundant information removed. An estimated 42 per cent of business information is duplicates, so learning where your data resides and what it contains can lead to substantial time and cost savings.
When selecting a vendor to help with backup, look for one that keeps management simple by supporting both physical and virtual environments. Backup should be intuitive and easy to manage. Multiple solutions are less likely to be used to their full potential.
Virtualisation can make information management more complex, particularly the area of backup, but SMBs can plan intelligently to implement a backup solution that will keep things simple, minimise time and storage by eliminating duplicate data, and maintain the high availability that users expect.
