Why Your AE Firm Should Look to the Cloud – Part 5: Data Recovery

Posted by Jeremiah Mcnicholas on March 4, 2014

AE Industry News Firm Management Software Implementation

disaster recovery

Blog Series: Five Reasons Why Your A/E Firm Should Look to the Cloud

This is the 5th in a 5 part series. To read Part 4 click here.

Download full whitepaper “Five Reasons Your A&E Firm Should Look to the Cloud”

Part 5: Proven Disaster Recovery

There are a number of great reasons to use the cloud including streamlined setup, enhanced security, zero maintenance, improved performance, and a proven disaster recovery plan. Over the past few weeks we have explored each of these benefits in great detail.

This week, we will discuss how your firm can eliminate the risk of losing valuable data in the event of a natural disaster by migrating to the cloud. It is no secret that a natural disaster can have a devastating impact on a firm’s IT infrastructure. What may be more mysterious is how a firm can mitigate that risk. Preparing for an IT disaster starts with backing up your data, but this step alone is not sufficient. It is important to backup frequently, redundantly, and remotely. Most cloud services handle this with ease.

In the event that a natural disaster or other such catastrophe damages your firm’s data, you will need to restore that data from the most recent backup. This backup is a snapshot of you firm’s data at the moment in time that the backup was made. The frequency that your firm performs backups can mean the difference between losing data from just the last hour rather than the entire previous month. For this reason, it is imperative that you backup your data as frequently as possible. With your data in the cloud, the tedious process of constantly backing up data can be eliminated. Most cloud services guarantee multiple backups each day.

While frequent backups are important, they won’t do any good if a disaster claims the device storing the backups too. This is why it is so important to create additional backups at other geographic locations. In the event of a large scale disaster like a hurricane or tornado, having additional backups stored outside your state or region is the only way your data will be safe. Unfortunately, an extensive backup solution like this comes with a large price tag. Even more affordable online backup solutions like Carbonite will leave your firm on the hook for about $1000 annually. Comparing costs like these to the cost of a cloud hosting service makes the decision to move to the cloud an easy one.

The cloud provider is responsible for the data they are hosting and must take the necessary precautions to mitigate their own risk. Most cloud software solutions offer multiple daily backups at different locations to prevent data loss in the event of a disaster. The real benefit to using a cloud solution with respect to disaster recovery is that you will never need to worry about recovering data. In the event of a disaster at your office, your firm’s data in the cloud will not be impacted. Consider making the move to the cloud and mitigate the risk of data loss at your firm.

Download full whitepaper “Five Reasons Your A&E Firm Should Look to the Cloud”

For more information about the Ajera Cloud click here.