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Considering backing up critical data to the cloud? 

In today’s 24/7 data-driven and digitised world, your business generates real-time critical and sensitive data. As you add to your systems infrastructure, valuable data consistently gathered from payroll and transactions through to customer information and managing inventory will continue to grow. 

Such data is vital and vulnerable, and this explosion in growth presents a huge operational responsibility to maintain, manage and recover it against a backdrop of ever-increasing data breaches, natural disasters, exploitative cyber threats and ransomware attacks.  

Each have far-reaching consequences, from reputational damage to crippling financial penalties and reduced productivity. In 2022, 39% of UK businesses reported a cyber-attack and 38% of them took longer than one day to recover. 

Yet despite this ongoing threat coupled with the post-pandemic move to hybrid working, which also presents significant IT and data security challenges, many businesses still rely on traditional local methods to backup and recover their data.  

With business continuity a priority in the digital age, is it time to make a change?  

The drawbacks of traditional data back-up methods 

Tapes, external devices, back-up servers, and off-site data centres, once the go-to for back-up and recovery, now present outdated limitations that your business cannot ignore. These encompass the following: 

  • High CAPEX – with traditional backup methods you tend to have to purchase hardware and software upfront and this can be a major investment. On top of this, their shorter lifespan compared to modern solutions may mean costly replacements for you further down the line, that you may not have budgeted for.
  • Poor scalable capability – as your business grows, your data increases, and with limited capacity traditional backup does not allow for that growth. To achieve scalability, you would need to predict growth prior to investing, or purchase and install as you require, both are costly.
  • High maintenance – time, effort and specialist skill are all required to maintain, backup, configure and test traditional back- solutions. This can place significant demand on your resources and your IT department who could be focusing on other important tasks. 

Why should you consider cloud backup? 

A reliance on outdated solutions which are costly and time consuming at best, inherently ineffectual at worse is no longer enough, it is time to look to modern solutions. 

Cloud-based Backup as a Service (BaaS) solution is a method of storing, managing, and maintaining your data offsite through an external service provider.  

The use of such a solution brings with it a range of advantages to your business when compared with traditional back-up:  

  • Cost-effective – compared to the high capital expenditure associated with older solutions, the costs of utilising the cloud are low. There is no infrastructure, hardware, or software to purchase or maintain, you pay for a subscription-based service. It’s as simple as pay for what you use, nothing more, nothing less.
  • Elasticity allows for growth – there are no limits as to the amount of information you can store in the cloud. This means that it supports you as your business grows or requires less storage space, adding or reducing the resources that you require quickly. This is particularly important in fast-paced industries.
  • Increased security –as well as off-site storage, the cloud offers effective multiple layers of security to protect your sensitive and vital data. These range from encryption and access control, through to air-gapping and immutable storage which ensure that hackers cannot access your remote data and that no-one can edit or delete files. 
  • Easy to manage – a trusted cloud backup provider will provide dedicated self-service portals and a management console enabling you to activate additional storage, configure databases, access resources and more. They can also look after configuration, maintenance and security minimising the time and cost you spend on it.
  • Straightforward disaster recovery solution – should you lose data, or it is corrupted, one of the biggest challenges is getting your business back up and running to minimise downtime, achieve continuity, and curb losses. If an incident or breach occurs, cloud-backups ensure your systems are up and running quickly and effectively.  

Making the change to cloud back-up 

Out of all your business assets, your data is one that you cannot replace.  

Your business continuity strategies call for a proactive 21st Century approach – a quick, reliable, cost-effective, and secure answer to protect your data, prevent disruption, downtime, and loss. 

Here at Brightsolid, we have partnered with Druva, recognised by Gartner as a visionary for Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Solutions, to deliver a comprehensive Backup as a Service (BaaS) solution.  

If you are considering making a change, speak to one of our experienced cloud experts, we can provide you with the valuable support, reassurance, and advice you need. 

Click here to start the conversation.