Chamber chat Business Boffins September 08

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Information and Communication Technology
Q I have heard a lot lately about disaster recovery and how businesses should have a plan in place if the worst should happen. But how can I make sure that I don’t suffer serious downtime issues if my business was hit by fire, flood or catastrophic IT failure?

Roger Harry Writes:

A We surveyed 50 welsh companies and public sector organisations and found that two thirds of them were at risk of data loss, despite thinking they are in the clear.

Even those with back-up systems would not be able to prevent significant loss of the data or system configurations that are vital to the running of the business if their network server were to fail.

Many organisations utilise back-up systems that are usually via an on-site tape which records the contents of the server’s hard disk periodically, which just isn’t good enough.

So the two essential requirements to avoiding disastrous data loss are off-site back ups for replication of servers and key business systems, and a continuous data recording system that copies everything on a second-by-second basis throughout the day.

We recently launched our business continuity managed service, which is the only one of its kind offered in Wales. It overcomes these IT-related business risks by remotely recording server activity continuously around the clock.

So in the event of a failure or virus attack we can restore the system and configurations to as it was just one second before the failure. The client would very quickly be up and running again with the same data and program settings.

We’ve had backing from the Welsh Assembly Government to make this vital recovery service available for large and small organisations. It’s a modest cost, but could save your business.

We have bought all the relevant software licences and, by making the service widely available, our clients can benefit by economies of scale and low costs.

To find out how vulnerable you may be to data disaster, you could ask yourself the questions on our security survey.

Circle IT was founded in 2001 by Roger Harry and Alun Emanuel. The company has quickly grown into Wales’ leading information technology company, employing 26 people from it’s Cardiff Gate head base. Contact us at www.circleit.co.uk or by calling 0870 4283582.