• Almost 85 percent of Small businesses that completely lost their data went out of business in less than a year!!!
• Almost seven out of 10 companies (68 percent) are losing sensitive data or having it stolen out from under them six times a year, according to new research from the IT Policy Compliance Group.  An additional 20 percent are losing sensitive data a whopping 22 times or more per year.
• The most sensitive losses are around customer data, financial data, corporate data, employee data and IT security data, according to the report, titled "Taking Action to Protect Sensitive Data".

Cost-effective Data Storage Solutions: The cost of data storage has dropped dramatically in recent years. In the same time, the labor costs related with managing data storage keep climbing. We recommend buying more storage and have it configured it now - even more than you think you'll need. It's worth it in the long run and the extra cost is insignificant.

To keep local storage management costs in line, think about how you'll configure your data storage:

• Do not upgrade storage build into existing servers! The cost of backing up the data, adding new hard drives, then restoring the data will be substantial. Replace old servers with new data storage that is cheaper and scalable.
• Always look for RAID solutions, which cost a little bit more but deliver fault tolerance with redundant configurations.
• If your data is stored on multiple servers, you can consolidate it onto fewer servers with larger hard drives so management and backup is easier.
• If you just need to add storage to your company network, consider Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, which are less sophisticated than file servers since they use web-based administrator interfaces and don’t have the administrative overhead classical servers have.

Many people choose to backup their data onto a CD or DVD. Others will use tape, flash drives or even an external hard drive. But users fail to realize that unless these are stored safely offsite, they face the same risk as your computer files being destroyed or damaged by fire, floods or other natural disasters. Online archiving removes this effort and worry because files and documents can be automatically backed up at an affordable price.  But is that enough?

Hybrid Cloud Backup solutions are focusing directly on the SMB market and addressing the weaknesses of both on-premise backup solutions and online backup solutions by creating a new backup system that is ideal for the growing business.

Hybrid cloud based backup solutions leverage the Internet like an online backup solution does, but they also place an appliance at your location. Companies use an appliance that receives the local backup and stores it. It then replicates this backup across the Internet to their cloud storage resources. This not only minimizes the performance impact of the local server during backup; since backups are to a local appliance they happen much faster. Having a local appliance also addresses the local restore issues.

Data is first encrypted before it is sent over wire to a remote secure datacenter. The datacenter itself is inside locked cages in a secure, temperature-controlled facility with redundant power, connectivity, and fire/flood protections. Access to datacenter is monitored and granted to authorized-personnel only. Backup encryption is 128-bit or higher over SSL connection, the same one used by banks and financial institutions.

Knowing that your data is securely stored where ONLY you can access it WHENEVER you need it, ill allow you to focus on your business.