Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category
“What is the best way to backup my data?” Many people call up asking this question. The real answer is that the more you do to backup your data, the better off you and your data will be. A single backup method or technology is rarely appropriate for a person or company.
Our businesses tend to hold multiple types of data and therefore we should be considering different backup strategies. Before we begin to worry about the technology or media we are going to use, we need to determine what data needs to be backed up. If your computer or office were completely destroyed and you had to get new equipment. What would you want restored to the new equipment?
To get started you should undertake an audit of your data and where it is held. Once you have it all listed, the next step is to classify it according to how quickly you need to be able to recover it, as well as how current the backup needs to be.
They aren’t easy questions to answer. One way of working through this is to think about what you would need to first to get your business backup and running after a fire destroyed all of it. This categorization will relate to which backup methods are most appropriate.
- For letters, spreadsheets, digital photos, and other documents; you should consider both online backup as well as an external hard drive. Online backup services should be able to chew through smaller files very quickly. The same goes with using an external drive.
- Outlook and other email, online backup will ensure that timely automatic backups keep your latest emails protected.
- For large collections of MP3 files or video files; backing up to an external drive and physically keeping a copy offsite is probably best. Although in both cases online backup can also be used, however the backing up or retrieval of videos can be slow will eat into your monthly download limits.
- For software; making copies of your installation media and maintaining copies in an offsite location is best.
- For databases or software that includes a database eg MYOB; I would use both an external drive and online backup. The combination of both will ensure that data is automatically secure once it has been written or the file closed. Depending on the size of the data, an external drive can be a very quick way to restore it.
The above recommendations are intended to be examples for home computer owners and small business computing. The other considerations that you should make are how organised are you regarding using external drives. Will you or your staff keep the drives plugged in and are you willing to have more than one so that they are rotated. Online backup is a great compliment to a manual backup strategy as it ensures should you or your staff not keep up with regular backups, then the online backup system can take over.
Interesting article sourced from www.scmagazineuk.com This is why I think small businesses (3- 5 people) don’t backup:
Small businesses don’t backup because they are too busy trying to stay in business and IT in most cases gets outsourced. Most backup solutions can costs in the thousands to be automated, so when faced with the option of cheaper manual processes, you know what they choose. Small businesses need cheaper alternatives that are automated.
Over a quarter of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are not backing up company data, while a third have conceded that they failed to secure data.
New research from Buffalo Technology found that data loss is being risked as data backup is being overlooked by SMEs. When these businesses were asked why this was the case, time (34 per cent), security worries (16 per cent) and not being concerned (14 per cent) were listed as the main reasons. Other small businesses (13 per cent) found complexity a barrier.
However, 46 per cent said that they would backup all of their data if the process was automated and 23 per cent said they would if it was quicker and easier. Security and reliability also featured as influential reasons.
Paul Hudson, northern European sales director at Buffalo Technology, said: “What this research highlights is that businesses are still to wake up to the fact that securing their company and customer information is a must. At a time when customer retention is just as significant as growth, giving your clients the confidence that their personal information is in safe hands has never been so important.
“Taking the appropriate steps to backup and secure data, whether on desktop PCs or company laptops, has never been easier and quicker. High capacity, easy to deploy and easy to manage data storage solutions are examples of a technology that can effortlessly transform SME IT systems into robust and secure business networks.”
Every year over 40% of computer users lose irreplaceable files. There are a wide variety of reasons, including hard drive crashes, theft, power surges, natural disasters, or accidental deletion of files. Businesses need to be aware that losing the most valuable files is a very real possibility and the proper precautions need to be taken. The loss of business critical data can be fatal when you calculate the costs of not being able to access critical data. it can run into thousands of dollars a day.
All businesses (and individuals) operating within Australia are legally obliged to keep certain data eg tax records for a minimum of five (5) years. Not doing so could lead to fines and other legal or financial consequences. However, even the most careful business owner can not guarantee they, or one of their workers, will not accidentally delete an important file, or suffer data loss from a hard drive crash.
Data backup is not always a number one priority when running a business, especially for a small business running on a limited IT budget. So how can you ensure the peace of mind that your data is backed up securely? One option is to implement an automatic online backup system like Carbonite that offers both the convenience of a regular backup routine and off-site data backup.
How does it work? Once installed on a computer, online backup software runs in the background searching for new and edited files that are backed up to secure, offsite servers. This data is then copied and double encrypted (for security purposes) before being transferred over a broadband Internet connection to the service’s remote servers. To make this process as simple and as “hands-off” as possible for businesses, online backup can operate a ’set and forget’ policy. Files are automatically backed up by the software, removing the time intensive manual element of backing up. This provides employees with more capacity for business critical activity, eliminating the risk of human error hindering the backup routine.
Increasingly, SMEs are turning to online backup because any lost files are easy to recover, even if an entire hard drive of data is lost or destroyed. Users simply log into their account, download the entire contents of their hard drive to a new machine and can start working again immediately. Restored files are even arranged in the same sub folders they were previously stored in. Individually lost files can also be restored to the same machine they were deleted from, meaning files are always accessible at a moment’s notice from a ‘virtual hard drive’.
Many online backup services offer an unlimited amount of online backup space for an annual fee. These costs, at around $80 a year, are significantly less than the ongoing costs of acquiring backup hardware and operating an ongoing backup routine.
In order to further minimise impact on business, online backup software can be set to automatically back up data overnight. This means that backup can be carried out when a computer is not in use, reducing the impact on the machine’s processing power and ensuring there is no interference with the user’s computer usage.
Keeping a local copy of data is by no means a bad idea. However, with online backup, data is stored on multiple disk drives making it 36 million times more reliable than an individual hard drive. By backing up the backups, a business can double protect itself against data loss and ensure compliance with the law at the same time.
This is from a recent article in The Age & SMH regarding remote backup and small business.
Brisbane small-business owner Nathan Oldfield sells water filters online and backs up his business records with Carbonite. He recognised the service’s impact instantly.
“I have an IT background, so I know that the big thing about backups is to have them off-site,” Oldfield says.
“Queensland Water Filters is a very small business … and we could have saved our documents to disc and exchanged them with a mate but it’s a bit ad hoc.
“Knowing that documents are automatically and continually backed up off-site means if you lose something, it’s only about 10 or 15 minutes’ work at most. Then you can get online and retrieve the backed-up copy.”
Oldfield, who also runs an IT consultancy business, recommends Carbonite and similar email backup services to his clients. He has helped clients avoid the situation faced by ma.gnolia.com.
“I’ve never had to use it for myself, touch wood,” he says.
“But a client who runs a web design business had his site hacked. Doing backups to the cloud meant we could retrieve the information for him and get his site back up and running again.”
You can read the full article here or here
Received a phone call from an eager customer last week. Adrian (not her real name) was a sole operator small business. Her business consisted of her and a single PC located at a retail location she leased.
Adrian recently (last 12 months) purchased a new desktop PC for her work. She saved all of her client’s documents on her hard drive ‘My Computer’.
Unfortunately for her, the hard drive on her newish PC crashed and failed. Worse still, was that she never backed up her work. Not even to a USB stick.
Adrian contacted her PC guy her advised her that she should send her hard drive to a hard drive restore centre in Melbourne who would weave some magic and restore as much of her data as they could.
Adrian received her data back luckily for her and so she could continue to work, but the bill was $2,500. I seriously couldn’t believe my ears.
Adrian saw a Carbonite listing I had placed in a Women’s Business Forum and contacted us wanting to find out more. She couldn’t believe how affordable it was.
She advised me that the data restore bill would cost her a month’s takings. That is quite a bit for a small business in today’s environment.
After completing her 30 day trial, Adrian has since purchased a 12 months subscription.
When marketing a product such as Carbonite, I regularly get asked ‘Who is your target market?’ I suppose I would like everyone to use Carbonite, it is certainly applicable to every home PC with some valuable information on it. A key market however is small business.
I would say that 50% of the 30 day trials that are downloaded via www.carbonite.com.au are from small businesses. I know this because I spend time researching many of the clients that download a trial so that I can get a better understanding of who they are and what services they may require.
Last week, I wrote about a small business client who spent $2,500 to have data restored from her failed hard drive. She was a 1 person business with her computer (MS Office) being the main operating/administration system. This is typical our typical small business client.
The attraction to Carbonite is simply that its automated (most customers aren’t over tech savvy) and its value for money at $6 per month for unlimited backup. For most of these clients who have 1 or 2 machines running their business, Carbonite offers the right solution to backup their MS Office files and accounting/bookkeeping packages.
In previous blogs I have covered MYOB and Quicken as appropriate accounting tools for small business and they certainly are. I have however also discovered that there are many other alternatives out there that are just as useful and probably cheaper and easier to use for a small business.
Below is a quick description of 2 applications that I have discovered over the past few months. If you are currently using one of these applications, or are planning on using either of them, be sure to also invest some time in your backup procedures. If you decide to go online, check us out at Carbonite, unlimited online backup for just $6 per month.
EasyAs Accounting Software
Small Business – Contractors – Individuals
Simple Accounting and Bookkeeping Software that’s easy to use and a pleasure to have.
Perfect for the Contractor, Subcontractor and Small Business Owner from all walks of life. Whether you have an existing business or are starting a business, easyas provides you with bookkeeping and accounting methods designed for those with no previous accounting experience.
EasyAs is currently being used in multiple countries and multiple industries as an alternative to the double entry bookkeeping methods which have dominated the landscape sense the 18th Century.
Download a trial here
BusinessBreeze – Australia’s first ‘click & run’ bookkeeping software
Martex realised that to make business software genuinely easy-to-use, we needed a whole new way of interacting with software. To meet the challenge, we developed from scratch a unique new, user-friendly interface that we call ‘click & run’: minimal number of mouse ‘clicks’ to complete or ‘run’ a task. It really is that simple!
Look at these real, measurable ‘clicks’ found in Martex’s flagship bookkeeping product, BusinessBreeze:
- 1 ‘click’ GST calculation worksheet for BAS
- 1 ‘click’ Profit & Loss statements
- 1 ‘click’ Balance Sheet
- 2 ‘click’ Group Certificate
Ease-of-use is not an empty promise with BusinessBreeze.
To find out more visit www.martex.com.au
Software as a Service, another great term to describe cloud computing/services. The article referenced below is by Esther Shein and was published in Computer World. I believe it provides some great examples of how small and medium sized businesses can use online backup solutions such as Carbonite and others to secure their vital business data. Here is a short extract and even though he didn’t pick Carbonite this time, maybe he will consider us when our small business solution is released sometime in 2009.
A data storage crash is the last thing a collision-repair shop needs to worry about. So when John Sweigart realized that the software he was using to manage his business was no longer compatible with the way he was backing up data, he knew it was time for a different option.
The Body Shop, has hundreds of records, including images that are kept on file for appraisers and insurers for at least a year. “It’s tons of information, and we’ve had occasions where the server’s crashed and we lost data,” says Sweigart, principal of The Body Shop. “We have paper files, but we still have to go back and re-create the electronic files.”
Since his business has multiple pieces of software to back up and no internal IT staff, Sweigart decided to outsource what had become a headache. He chose Verio, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) backup provider. For US$29 per location per month, The Body Shop has automatic backup of all its disk drives and servers every night.
Before switching to SaaS backup, each Body Shop location kept tapes on hand that an employee had to back up and take home at night. “It turned into such a comprehensive process, and you had to make sure it was done right every night and that someone was actually taking [the tape],” says Sweigart. “We had an incredible sense of paranoia doing all this extra work, and we needed a better option.”
Data backup continues to be a challenge — at small and midsize businesses in particular — because it requires a multifaceted infrastructure of backup software, networks, servers, disk arrays and tape systems. Many companies have trouble completing backups in the allotted time, and a significant number of backups fail or complete with errors. Often, companies don’t protect machines at remote locations because of the hassle, so there are gaps in backup coverage.
Because of issues like these, more companies are turning to SaaS backup providers, which support and maintain a variety of applications over the Internet without requiring their clients to invest in any servers or install any software on-site.
“Companies are feeling more comfortable with the concept of buying services out of the cloud,” notes Carl Howe, an analyst at Yankee Group Research. “I think there’s a perception that if it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for me.”
I was doing some market research the other day and I contacted a well known competitor of the product Carbonite. The company is well regarded and services many financial planning practises and legal firms. I have no doubt they do a great job.
I pretended to be a small business with 10 Gig of data to backup. I said that my back-up would grow over time but that growth would be gradual.
The sales person was very pleasant and sent me a quote that evening. No complaints about the service. The reason why I performed the research was that in my previous life marketing financial planning software to small/medium sized practises, I found many planners didn’t spend up on IT systems nor support. Particularly those that are a one person business. I would assume that they do some sort of backup but I am sure a good portion of them don’t (atleast not regularly enough).
The quote came back at $1600 for the first year and $1300 thereafter at 10 Gig. I wonder how many advisers would spend $1300 pa to have their PC backed up. Many didn’t want to spend half of that on insurance analysis software that helped them sell and earn revenue when markets where better. I also saw an advert from a local tech shop. They promoted a 1 hr service for $110, where they would write scripts so that you could use rotating memory sticks (they ranged from $30 – $140). This quote is more reasonable but still requires manual work and the risk that the memory stick may get lost or fail.
Alternatively they could use something like Carbonite which offers unlimited back-up for $59.95. It’s also automated so once installed they don’t need to touch it again. It will backup all of their emails, spreadsheets, SoAs, and software data files. That’s pretty much all they need.
Just to clarify however, the competitor was a full service provider that a medium and large corporate could use. Whereas Carbonite, has been designed for backing up the PC’s hard drive, not servers etc. For the small business financial adviser who travels to and from his/her clients with their laptop, $59.95 is ideal and a good deal at that. Importantly it’s a good way to get advisers into the discipline of backing up their business PC.
For more info on Carbonite, go to www.carbonite.com.au.
When you consider how much we pay for our computers $1000+, how much we pay for broadband/cable connection $300 pa, plus how much we pay for each of the songs we legally download, and all of the effort you put into performing the downloads or creating those important documents surely its got to be worth enough to want to secure it.
It baffles me that pc owners think that because MS Office has saved it, that its saved forever. I believe I have lost more files from my own errors than from a pc disaster. I am my own worst enemy.
One of the cheapest back-up services out there that is brain dead simple and really unlimited is Carbonite at $60 pa. Surely pc owners out there would have information on their pc that would be worth more than $60. Your contacts alone are worth more than that.
What would it cost you to recover or re-enter all of your contacts if you lost them. Try this simple calculation. Multiply what you are currently getting paid per hour by 1.5x then multiply the result by the number of hours you think it will take for you to recover your contacts, say 2hours +. Close enough to $60? Factor in the frustration of having to go through the motions of manually finding them and the return on investment of Carbonite is sounding very sweet.
Its got to be worth a look in doesn’t it? www.carbonite.com.au
