An IT Support Blog from London

Business continuity matters. It matters for profits, for client satisfaction – and for keeping you in business in the long run. Business continuity planning is an important element in ensuring continuing operations. Partnering with the right technology firm is key given how critical technology is to business operations.

In this article we will take a look at the contribution that your IT partner can make to ensuring business continuity and outline why, when looking for IT support London companies need to seek a partner that does much more than deliver technical support – why you need a partner that helps you to deliver business continuity too.

Disaster recovery is one of those topics that isn't particularly complicated, yet is easily misunderstood. It is, nonetheless, a crucial aspect of technology management. The cost of a disaster can be tremendous, and with no fast route to recovery, an adverse event can have game-changing consequences for a business.

Getting backup and disaster recovery right is not that hard, yet 50% of UK businesses are leaving their data at risk, according to a 2018 survey. Though businesses generally make some effort to guard against disaster, plenty of disaster recovery myths persist. In this article, we tackle those myths and propose steps to ensure a reliable disaster recovery scenario.

Disasters are by definition rare and unpredictable and therefore not front and centre when executives think about day to day operational activities. Yet an information technology disaster can strike any business, and the costs to recover from such an event can be tremendous. As with many risks, the probability of a disaster affecting your company’s information technology infrastructure can be mitigated, and so can the fallout should the worst happen. One of the best ways to reduce the damage is to have a well-designed and tested disaster recovery plan (DRP) in place.

Data backups are among the top cyber security countermeasures against ransomware, flood, fire, and other threats to data availability. As long as you have backup copies of your data, your business will have a pretty good chance of recovering from almost any major disaster. But what kind of data backup solution is the best?

It depends on your specific requirements. These days, backup solutions can be grouped into two - online backups and offline backups. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Knowing when to select one over the other can help you maximise your financial resources when spending on a backup solution.

Since a comprehensive comparison of these two sets of solutions can be quite long, we’ve decided to focus first on online backups. In this post, we’ll help identify situations when an online backup would be a better fit. But before we do that, let me make sure our definitions of these terms are the same.

Companies who require high levels of availability need a reliable disaster recovery strategy. For many organisations, that usually means adhering to the 3-2-1 backup rule, where the 1 refers to keeping 1 backup copy offsite. Traditionally, that copy is stored in a dedicated, company-owned and/or managed disaster recovery infrastructure. Lately, however, businesses have started turning to cloud-based disaster recovery solutions. This article explains why that strategy is better.

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?

The 3-2-1 backup rule is a highly recommended backup strategy that says you must:

• Possess at least 3 copies of your data;
• Store copies on two different kinds of storage media; and
• Keep one of those copies offsite.

While there may be a few businesses that don’t need to embark on cloud migration, they’re really more the exceptions than the rule. If you’re still pondering on whether it’s already time to move to the cloud, here are some tell-tale signs your company is ready for it.

Renewed emphasis on cost control for recruiters

The difficult few years that followed the credit crunch meant the recruitment sector had to endure some tough times. Reduced hiring and increased candidate numbers as headcount were trimmed made the sector one of the first to be hit. When it’s a buyer’s market, clients bargain hard and squeeze margins. But that’s business and you know you would if things were the other way round!

The recession drove many recruiters to re-evaluate their systems and processes. Cloud and online technologies offered the opportunity to cut costs, improve efficiency and gain competitive advantage. Specialised line-of-business applications for the recruitment sector, often integrating software automation functionality, transformed the back and front office for many.

Accredited to provide leading back up and DR solutions

HTL Support is proud to announce that we are now accredited Silver ProPartners for Veeam backup and hosted disaster recovery (DR) solutions.