The Battle For Your Backup And Disaster Recovery Business

By Larry Nicholson, President, Nicholson Network Services Inc., ASCII Group (Canada) Member Since 2014

There are many ways to know if a business product or service has reached mainstream status. The easy one to talk about is mobile phones. Back in the day there were telephones to simply make phone calls, then there were phones that could send text messages, and then phones with cameras ... and on and on it went. The same can be said for Backup-as-a-Service (BAAS) or simply cloud-based backup (CBB). A few years ago there were only a couple of vendors in this space and they all did pretty much the same thing; when the cloud finally hit mainstream, the backup and disaster recovery marketplace exploded and the number of vendors offering BAAS and CBB also took off.

As they say with any business service, ensure that you perform your due diligence and you know where and what they are doing with your data. One of the biggest issues I have with data storage is: where is the data being stored? If you are a U.S. company you know all about the Patriot Act. But what about Canadian- or European-based companies? Where should their data be stored, or more importantly, where should it not be stored? Once you have confirmed where your data is going, the next question is how much data is it, and more importantly, if there is an issue at your office, how quickly can you get the data back. A file or two is one thing. If you need a server’s data drive or several large CAD drawings — it could take hours. Does the backup provider offer a round-trip hard drive service (a USB drive is loaded with your data and shipped overnight to you)? This allows you to get back up and running fairly quickly.

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