Importance of backup
Backup & Recovery are universal IT infrastructure challenges, which face every user, consumer and business alike. As long as data is held on vulnerable media, such as “spinning disks” it is likely to get lost sooner or later, and even if hardware would be infallible, users are not, and human error will no doubt continue to be the weak link in the chain for the foreseeable future.
Making backups is usually associated with disasters, like fire, floods or theft, but actually most restore operations, up to 99%, are performed to recover a single file of folder, that has gone lost or damaged as a result of user error.
The volume of digital data that is daily created on a variety of computers and devices is rapidly growing, fueled by the increasing network bandwidth and storage capacity available on these systems. Often the stored data is critical, whether it has financial value for companies or sentimental value for consumers. Both target groups feel the need to have a proper backup of the valuable data.
For years companies offer online disk space for end users, enabling them to store and access files from any location. The market for online disk space has emerged into store and share applications, where some of the stored data can also be shared with other users. These services are positioned as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering with monthly fees. The offering is moderately successful, but misses some enriching features. Customers are not only looking for a copy of their files, but also for a secure, automatic and unattended way to have an up to date backup as well.
Online Backup vs Tape Backup. What to choose?
Online backup:
Online backup is the response to the mentioned above requirements, a full service backup performed over the Internet. The service supports secure data transfer, encryption, compression, data de-duplication and multi versioning. Nowadays the percentage of users of online backup among consumers and SMBs is estimated at respectively 4% and 15%. The IASO Online Backup software differentiates itself from competitors with a highly efficient data de-duplication mechanism on the client side and an unparalleled scalability of the solution on the server side, while offering a rich set of features. Learn more about our online backup software solution
Tape backup:
Tape has long been and today still is the most commonly used backup medium. Without going into too much detail, it is widely recognised that there are several drawbacks associated with this type of solution. Particularly in the SMB space, with its lack of specialised IT staff, it has proven to be very difficult to get a reasonable level of reliability with tape backup. For the vast bottom end of the market, tape is basically unavailable, as it is too expensive and just too difficult. Consumers usually make no backup at all, or very infrequently at best. Alternative media such as DVD/CD are notoriously unreliable and so are cheap local hard drives that are sold for their backup abilities.
Thus online backup is better than a tape backup because:
- online backup is stored in a secure remote location;
- it is done automatically, no human intervention is needed;
- the backup is always available immediately when this is necessry;
- online backup is more secure than a tape backup;
- data can be covered quickly and easily.
IASO Backup has developed a software solution that basically addresses all the downsides of the traditional backup solutions and fully automates the backup process. By using disk as a storage medium, and using the Internet Protocol for the transportation of data, users and administrators are warranted continuous access to their data, which is stored off-site, usually in a protected data centre.
Learn more about IASO Backup Bank Features & Benefits, How it Works and Pricing