Not all offsite backup services (and there’re hundreds) are the same. Whether in terms of the price, service guarantees, features or quality, these services differ a lot from each other i.e. some are better than the rest; that’s true for all kinds of services and products available in any part of the world.
Here, we’ve
compiled a list for you:
Test the Application before Making a Decision
Before you decide
to roll offsite backup application software on all your production systems, make
it a point to test its reliability. Yes, every software vendor or IT company is
going to make promises including seamless Operating System integration, easy to
configure automated offsite backups, compliance to industry benchmarks and so
on. But, very few actually deliver on these promises. And, you cannot really leave
your precious business data backup to chance, can you?
Flat Fees Are Usually Better
It’s advisable to choose
offsite backup service providers, after consulting and IT Solutions Company of course, that charges flat fees against well defined
storage limits. Whether you require just about 200MB storage space or you need 100GBs,
make it a point to go for a well defined storage plan for offsite backup
instead of those involving per MB or per GB fees; budgeting ‘the total cost of
backups’ will thus be much easier.
Reporting Tools
It’s a good thing
to be skeptical when you’re using various IT systems and applications. Merely assuming
a system to be taking automated backups at an offsite location is not enough.
You need to choose an offsite backup solution that comes pre-equipped with
‘stellar’ reporting tools and mechanisms. For example, you should be able to know
everything about the time last 20 backups took place, the amount of data and
list of files back up and whether there were any backup operation failures or
warnings generated.
Easy to Use
Although IT
solution companies that help businesses like yours to have offsite backup
software configured really well, it’s important that the offsite backup
solution chosen is really easy to use. Consider making the best use of trial
period before you take a final call on this matter. Find out if your employees
are really comfortable working with the application at your end.
Quick and Hassle Free Recovery
An offsite backup solution is no good if it doesn’t have 1-2-3 simple steps for quick
data recovery. Whether you’ve got an in-house IT guy looking after various
systems and software or a partner organization providing round the clock IT
support, having a quick response backup solution would help ensure minimum down
time. Company operations too, will not be affected by accidental file deletion,
hard drive crash or OS malfunctions. That said – make it a point to test the
recovery functions of the software as if you’ve a real urgency at hand.