October 9, 2019

Cloud Backup and Disaster Recovery are often neglected by organizations until it is too late, and a disaster has drastically impacted their bottom line. Many companies go with the cheaper alternative of a utility service provider when they should be utilizing a fully managed cloud service provider. From the one-person office to the largest enterprise and anywhere in between, every company has information that needs to be managed, backed-up, and stored. In reality, too many organizations do not give backup and disaster recovery the attention it deserves. Why?  Rarely is it someone’s full-time job to manage backups. IT resources are stretched thin and data protection is easily neglected when there are many other competing priorities. Turn-over in IT creates gaps in the management of data protection. IT Staff are rarely professionally trained in areas of backup and DR and lack deep experience. Certainly, organizations can address the issues above –but the question becomes: Is investing in data protection in-house the most strategic decision? Backup is like buying insurance. You could go with the lowest cost provider and hope nothing happens, or spend the extra money and have the security you really need, when you really need it. Two Types of Backup Service Providers Utility Service Provider The “utility” type of service provider is typically a low-cost provider that does not actively monitor your data. It provides the technology and expects you to do the rest of the work monitoring and managing the backups. The utility service provider does not care if your backups do not run for a week, or if best practices are followed by their end-clients. The responsibility for monitoring and managing backups is squarely on the customer. If a business has a dedicated IT staff that can devote all of its time to backups, the utility service provider may be a great choice.  However, the reason Managecast began providing data protection services nearly 10 years ago was that many organizations do not have dedicated and trained staff and do not follow best practices for data protection. Pinning your critical backups on an unqualified IT admin can result in neglected backups and lost data. Fully Managed Cloud Backup Service Provider With the help of a fully managed cloud backup service provider, backups will never be neglected and you will have a team of highly trained, certified, professionals managing your data. Although the service may appear to come at an overall higher price compared to the utility provider, the benefits you receive far outweigh the cost, especially when factoring in the operational cost for internal resources to manage and monitor everything. Investing in a fully managed cloud backup service allows your IT staff to be more strategic and focus on items that enhance your business. So how do you pick the Managed Backup Service Provider that is right for your business? The key is asking the right questions. Four Questions to Ask Potential MSP’s How long have they been in business? In the heavily saturated cloud backup industry, it’s important to know how long a company has been in business. Providers that have been in the industry for many years bring expertise that newer companies don’t have. Determine ahead of time how much experience they have working with businesses like yours, and how reliable they are when it comes to protecting data. What are their compliance standards? Look for service providers audited by third-party organizations such as SSAE SOC audits. SOC audits are specifically for Information Service Organizations and confirm appropriate controls are in place in order to provide a secure and reliable service to clients. Audit results can be obtained from the service provider as requested. Do they use trusted technology? New backup software is popping up day by day, but that doesn’t mean the technology is trusted and well-vetted. It is important to choose a service provider that uses best-of-breed technologies, such as Veeam Cloud Connect, for its backups. Otherwise, the technology could fail and the time and money put into these backups would be wasted, and data would be lost. What is their core focus? Many service providers focus on many aspects of IT, but not many focus solely on data protection. Do they have a dedicated team to manage only backups and disaster recovery? A service provider solely focused on backup and DR will offer a higher level of service. How Can We Help? At Managecast, we fully manage and monitor your backups so that you can focus on more strategic initiatives. Interested in learning how Managecast can help your business with its cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions? Fill out this form for more information!