Data Backup - Are you Pennywise or Pound Foolish?

Even after 42 years in the IT business, I'm still amazed at the way some reasonably intelligent business people treat the idea of data backups.

Too many people look at data backup as an overhead expense to be kept to a minimum at all costs.  You can't imagine the number of times a conversation about backing up business data starts with "I don't want to pay very much!"  or "Can you keep me under $20 per month?"  Sometimes I just say to them "Is that all you think your business is worth?"

Look, Data Backup is a straight forward proposition.  Either your data is valuable and protecting it should be your #1 priority or you're backing up information that isn't valuable and then the question becomes "Why the heck are you holding onto it in the first place?"

Let's face it, not all the data on your hard drive is critical or even valuable.  Unfortunately, computer hard drives have turned into digital dumping grounds.  Once a file hits the file server, very few organizations make any attempt to ever clean if off.  Data Taxonomy - the organization and retention of data in an orderly fashion is virtually non-existant in many organizations.  The attitude seems to be: "Hey, drive space is cheap!  Rather than bother trying to organize this stuff and clean up the server, it's just cheaper to buy another hard drive."

The amount of data stored in the world doubles every 3 years.  Are you contributing to the digitial clutter or doing something about it?  The cost of running a backup has more to do with how much you're backing up than the cost per GB of backing it up.  If I told you that to back up the entire Encyclopedia Britannica would cost less than 50 cents on most services, would you be surprised?  Not a lot is it?  A backup isn't expensive IF you manage what you back up.

If you want want to hold down the cost of your backups, trying controlling what you're backing up in the first place!  Figure out what you absolutely need to keep your business operating and skip the rest.  You'll probably be amazed at how much useless baggage you can skip over because it's not business critical. 

Keep in mind that the first backup question for any business leader should be "What do we need to keep operating?" 

The next question is "How long could we operate without it?"  

The third is "How fast can I get my backup copies back if something goes wrong?" 

There are a few more but "What's it cost?" should be way down on your list. 

Anyone who reverses that order is just asking for trouble.