Online Data Backup Services: Reasons why businesses are turning towards them

COST
When people compare the cost of backup solutions they often make the mistake of just looking at the monthly fees involved with data backup services. There is often a failure to understand the accumulation of costs related to tape backup of which there are many hidden costs that aren’t usually considered. There are the hardware costs, cost of tapes, storage costs, labour costs and the associated costs of only a 50% restore success rate.
Conversely, online data backup services have come down in price over the past few years. Many are delivered as subscription services – making it easy to write off expenditure in a cash flow forecast - and backups are carried out automatically without the need for user intervention. Data is also stored offsite automatically, removing the need for storage management costs.
FOCUS
If your business is in accounts; or architecture; or dentistry; or consulting; or plumbing; or retail; or manufacturing; or financial markets, you should really be focusing on what you do best. You don’t source your own water from the French Alps, nor do you generate your own electricity from privately owned wind farms – so why try to manage something you don’t specialise in?
If it is to be done reliability, backup needs management and resources. Data backup service helps companies move attention away from data backup and to start focusing on their core competencies. And if they operate in a competitive market - they’re going to have to focus.
RELIABILITY
There is no denying it – online data backup is more reliable than tape backup. Depending on what report you read, the average success rate of a data restore from tape is around 50%. It doesn’t make sense to invest so much time and money in something that isn’t 100% guaranteed to work. Consequently, many customers of online backup sign up on the back of tape related data loss.
Online backup involves disk-to-disk technology where, under specialist technical management, data recovery is more than 99% certain. Reputable online backup service providers will also backup data to two sites for failover guarantee. In this instance, even in the unlikely event that one data centre where to fail, another exists on standby.

PEACE OF MIND
Perhaps the key reason why companies are now signing up for online backup services. An online data backup and disaster recovery service allows people to forget their worries about data integrity. It gives them the confidence of knowing that their data is being backed up reliably – monitored and managed by people who specialise in what they do.