Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I`ve been in the information technology business for more than 15 years, providing data management services for mid-size to large corporations. My question to everyone is....do you think there`s a need to help small businesses with backup and recovery, security of data, or disaster recovery?

 

What will a small business being will to pay to protect their business data?

 

Is a small business willing to outsource backup and recovery services to a service provider?

 

Your feed back is much appreciated as we are trying to develop a program that meets the need of smaller companies.

 

Thanks

 

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Jim Schoenle
Rise Digital Media Solutions
www.rise-digital.com

When deciding if someone will buy it or not, you have to consider 1) what they are doing now, 2) what their problems with the current setup are now, and 3) what they are willing to pay (if anything) to alleviate current problems.

So you`d need to overcome what most people probably do, which is connect an external drive or 2 and use some store-bought software to schedule backups at night.

So what do you offer? Are you going to set up that for them? Are you offering a better system entirely? Are you guaranteeing your system?

I`m in the same spot Jim. I`m talking with other SMB`s to find out what they need for infosec and business risk management from an IT perspective.

I would recommend talking to SMB`s (pick 100 and call them to see if you can get some time to discuss your offering with them) Note this is not a sales call, but an information gathering call. Make sure you declare your intent with them upfront and they will be more willing to talk with you.

Make a set of question that you must have answered and focus on those. Keep your questions focused to find out about all of the information that Nikole suggested you find out.

I’m assuming most small business’ are not doing much to protect their data in a structured process, unless they have experienced a significant data loss in the past. My approach would be through the education of data protection and how devastating such as loss would be for a small business.

 

Most industry reports suggest less than 30% of small businesses have an adequate data protection strategy…..is it because they don’t understand the importance? Technology is too difficult to implement? Or they haven’t found the right solution?   

 

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Jim Schoenle
Rise Digital Media Solutions
www.rise-digital.com

Because there has to be a problem before you make a sale.

It is a hard push to just tell them  "you need my project because ..."

Well, let`s consider the way things are, not the way they ought to be.

Computers have been around now for what....almost 20 years? The hard drive has been around for about that long. The fact that hard drives do crash at some point has also been well understood for pretty much just as long.

So how come so few people back up their system?

Enterprise IT departments, charged with and paid to ensure data reliability and backups, they do those backups. But does anyone know the statistic of how many home computer owners (including home businesses) actually have a current backup of anything?

I think a backup business is going to be a hard sell. Particularly when AT&T offers off-site backups as part of their telcom package to anyone. Even there, I had to go out and look for it. They don`t routinely promote it like they do their broadband and cell technology.

As I think about it, it`s one of those businesses where there`s no question people understand exactly the product. BUT!...that product is a solution to everyone`s worst nightmare. In human nature, people want to mostly avoid thinking about that worst nightmare.

So the problem is that in order to buy the product, someone has to accept that possibility of total catastrophe. It`s WAY easier to just avoid the whole thing than to do something about it ahead of time.

Then there`s the whole problem of today`s society, where few people ever think ahead about anything. They`re so busy "fighting fires," don`t`cha know... :-)

As a small business owner big enough to be totally reliant on the integrity of my data yet too small for an IT department I would be interested in this type of service.  There are technology issues as well.  We are very diligent in the use of our current backup but we are outgrowing this DDS style tape system. 

We could purchase upgraded hardware but the prices I see are not attractive.  If they are the only option than my data is valuable enough that I will invest the $.  We have also considered online services but these seem to run about $250 per month.  This makes the hardware purchase seem worthwhile, but certainly doesn`t releive the headache of supporting the hardware and the inevitable upgrades/patches/hot fixes/etc.

Hopefully this has answered some of your questions directly.  Bottom line, as an IT novice, I am not comfortable with the options that I have discovered to this point.  I have also found very few resources interested in helping.  This tells me that there may well be a larger market need.

I just started a new thread before I saw this one on a very similar subject. I run a graphic design studio and have gigs upon gigs of client work that needs to be backed up and cleared off the main drives to allow more space. I am currently using 700MB CDs for several reasons. 1) it`s inexpensive, 2) We can get to the files easily as past clients often come back wanting more work done to their original project and 3) the CDs can be easily labeled making it easier to find the files we are looking for.  Drawbacks are 1) It`s time consuming, my last back up was about 60Gig and took 89 CDs and several weeks to do 2) CDs are somewhat unstable, but aren`t drives too? 3) The shear time it takes to do the backup prevents me from doing it as much as I should.

So, obviously I am interested in some kind of backup system that I can access easily, that is inexpensive and that I can automate to backup bi-monthly or monthly. I would think that the need is there, especially for graphic design studios or other media producing companies because their files are very large.

Just heard about this site on Coast to Coast: Carbonite
Make it simple enough, and maybe people actually will back up their systems. :-)

Here is another solution for remote back-ups http://www.mozypro.com/mozy_pro/comparison

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Silvia
www.justaphonecallaway.com