A solid data backup plan can help your company survive catastrophic data loss. Both cloud-based and traditional in-house solutions can be used to back up data. However, cloud-based solutions have several notable advantages.
Here are four reasons to use a cloud-based data backup solution:
1. Cost
To implement an in-house data backup solution, your company must purchase all the required infrastructure, including the physical storage. What’s more, since these solutions come with broad tiers of storage space, you often end up paying for much more space than you actually need.
With a cloud-based data backup solution, you don’t need to purchase any infrastructure or pay for the IT staff’s time to install and maintain it. Plus, you only pay for the storage space you actually use.
2. Scalability
Sometimes companies need to significantly expand their data backup solution. It takes both time and money to scale an in-house data backup solution as new infrastructure will likely need to be purchased and installed.
Cloud-based data backup solutions seamlessly scale along with your company’s needs. This completely eliminates all the overhead involved in scaling your own infrastructure, and lets you focus on growing your business instead.
3. Reliability
Cloud-based data backup service providers sign service level agreements, or SLAs, with their clients. These agreements clearly state the level of uptime, or amount of time that the data backup service is guaranteed to be available. Uptime levels range from 99.9% to 99.999%, where the level is typically referred to by the number of nines. So 99.9% is "3 nines" and 99.999% is "5 nines."
Many service providers have redundant systems and contingency plans in place to ensure their level of uptime. If the uptime falls below a certain agreed-upon threshold, you may be entitled to a refund or service credits as per the SLA.
4. Disaster Recovery
It’s generally considered a best practice to move copies of in-house backups to an off-site location. Otherwise, you could permanently lose data if a fire destroys the server room, a tornado ravages the building, or another type of disaster occurs.
No such considerations are necessary with cloud-based backup solutions. Providers must meet the contractual obligations within their SLA, typically replicating all backups to multiple data centers. This redundancy basically guarantees that your data is never lost.
In addition, recovering data from from a cloud-based backup solution tends to be much easier than restoring your own in-house backups. As long as you have Internet access, you can restore your data with the click of a button.
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About CHIPS Computer Services
CHIPS Computer Services is an award winning Managed Services Provider specializing in help businesses increase efficiencies and profits by levering properly managed technology. To learn how CHIPS can help your business, email us at sales@chipscs.com to schedule no cost business assessment.
