Don Stevenson, IT Consultant

The “Blue Screen of Death.” You know it, you dread it. The moment when your computer crashes, leaving behind a screen covered in ominous messages about lost files.

As a consumer, a hard drive crash or an accidental latte/keyboard interaction are annoying and inconvenient problems. Maybe you’ve backed up your work, or maybe you’ll have to reconstruct it from scratch.

For most businesses, however, the potential loss of data due to accidents or malicious activity is catastrophic. When Delta Airlines experienced a five-hour loss of service due to technical issues in 2016, for example, the company reportedly lost $150 million.

Public and private sector organizations have discovered the importance of data redundancy, or backing up their sensitive information to an offsite Cloud storage provider. This convenient and cost-effective solution allows businesses to preserve their most sensitive information, and manage it without the cost of onsite servers. Read more about the basics of Cloud computing.

Business Cloud storage is not the same as managing files on Google Docs or Dropbox. With Cloud services, your data is protected through a second level of backups for disaster recovery. These subscription-based services ensure that your information can be recovered, even if your physical office cannot be accessed.

For example, there was a manufacturing organization whose business offices were damaged during New England’s 2010 “Snowmaggedon.” The roof collapsed. Power went off. Servers shut down. The company had no disaster recovery plan and could not resume work.

Eventually, my team managed to enter the building and determine that the servers were intact. We then moved the servers to TechBoston’s facilities, where they were hosted for the client, who was able to resume doing business.

With Cloud backup services, that business information would have been backed up automatically and made available to the client 24/7. The client moved to Cloud storage after the incident.

Transitioning to a Cloud storage provider is not difficult and can be customized for each organization’s needs. Once your data is backed up to the Cloud, you’ll have a truly cost-effective way to protect sensitive information and work collaboratively.

Subscription-based Cloud services are designed to make automatic backups easy to synchronize and schedule. Subscription plans are priced according to storage needs and duration of contract. With Cloud, your organization can access information from anywhere and rest assured that the data is protected in the event of disruption.