Did you know that there’s a World Backup Day on 31st March? I didn’t! But I do know how vital backups are to businesses.

What are backups?

A backup takes a copy of all your data and files in case the original is lost or damaged. So, in essence, the aim of a backup is to reduce the amount of data you would lose should one of your critical operational systems have a fatal hardware or hacking issue. If your workforce enters a high volume of data each day, then a half hourly backup routine could be warranted. Otherwise you might choose to take backups nightly (when no-one is using the system of course).

Backups in the cloud and on-premise

The good news is, if you’ve got cloud solutions, backups should already be part of your hosting solution. Backup services usually depend on the size of your database (e.g. do you have lots of customers or are you saving lots of big documents?) and your retention policy (how long you want to keep them). You therefore need to keep an eye on your ever growing databases and choose the right backup plan accordingly.

If you’ve got on-premise solutions, your IT department or technology partner should have discussed backups with you, but it’s always worth reviewing this regularly as you roll out new systems or retire old ones.

Backup best practice

Your backup processes should also involve useful housekeeping such as:

  • Taking additional backups before any upgrades, data imports or other major changes to your systems.
  • Clearing off older backups, ensuring your servers don’t run out of space and subsequent backups fail.
  • Making sure your backup completes before the next one is scheduled. If a backup takes 90 minutes to complete, then hourly backups will conflict.
  • Testing that you can restore your backups. There’s nothing worse than finding out in your hour of need that the backup has corrupted.

Backup at work and at home

On a personal note, you should also ensure that your photos and files are regularly backed up. In this tech-savvy era, you probably upload your photos taken on your phone to your OneDrive, DropBox, iCloud or other online storage solution but, according to worldbackupday.com, 30% of people have never backed up!

Further information

Let’s talk about how we can help your IT team protect your business critical systems or migrate on-premise systems to a hosted cloud solution. We can work with you to help decide what’s best for your business, for now and as you evolve over time. Contact us today for more information.

We hope you found this article interesting and informative. For more ideas on how to streamline, automate and digitally transform your business (thereby saving you time and money):
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Caroline Robertson Project & Planning Manager
Caroline has lived in the CRM and technology world from her very first job! From Sales Executive to CRM Consultant, Project Manager to Marketing Team Leader, she loves ticking things off a list so has a reputation for "getting things done". Outside work, she is a dedicated mother and rescue pup parent as well as caring for her siblings and parents.
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