In this blog, we will explore the advantages of cloud backup as a service, including increased availability and control of data, improved cost efficiency and strengthened disaster recovery and business continuity plans. Is it Time to review and Upgrade Your Backup?
Maximise IT Resources
Deploying a strategy to utilise a backup solution that is managed and proactively monitored 24/7/365 by your technology partner allows you to focus on improving your business, providing excellent client services while sleeping at nights knowing that your data is constantly being backed up and available from different points in time for when you need it.
A backup that runs once a night only gives you one point in time to recovery from every 24 hours, this was once acceptable but not anymore as your practice moves through digital transformation and to paperless solutions.
Adapting the backup as you evolve
As you business evolves its often the last item to be reviewed is your backup and recovery strategy. We especially see this as business grow becoming an issue. As you cost of downtime changes every time to add a team member or client, as now every minute you are offline you a creating more costs and brand impact.
The new world of remote / work anywhere era is a great example of this, check out our recent thoughts on this here
Reducing Total Cost of Ownership
When accountancy practices utilise cloud technology, they can decrease the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in a number of different ways.
Using remote, cloud-based servers removes the need for in-house storage equipment and application requirements, as well as additional costs such as standby equipment, software updates, management and the ever-increasing data storage.
The flexibility and scalability of cloud backup solutions means that your service is tailored to your needs around your practice recovery time requirements and the point in time that data is recovered from. Meaning you understand and can rapidly change the solution as your practice evolves.
Shifting from Capex to Opex
For many practices, the shift from a capital expenditure (Capex) to operational expenditure (Opex) model is one of the key benefits of the cloud model. With an OpEx model, your accountancy practice will gain more flexibility;
With a pay-as-you-go fixed price service you will always be in control and easily predict the monthly costs. With cloud backup as a service, you can take advantage of the cloud’s elasticity to pay for only what you need, when you need it and not have systems unutilised creating costs.
It frees up valuable resources that would otherwise be spent managing onsite infrastructure and reduces your need to spend money on hardware and software costs every 3-4 years.
Achieve Best Practices
Best in class data backup solutions/services base measure is to follow a well-known configuration called the “3-2-1 Rule”.
3. Have at least three different copies of your data, backed up over different periods of time to ensure that you can recover from incidents that have affected multiple versions of your data.
2. Store your data on at least two different types of storage media. Storing different copies of your data on the same server is not enough to ensure recovery because, in the case of the failure of that server, all copies would become unavailable.
1. Keep one version of your backup in an off-site location, such as another office or a cloud-based data centre.
Improve Disaster Recovery
The use of tapes as a data backup solution has been around for decades but has become antiquated due to the obstacles it poses, such as the high setup costs and human interaction required daily or when data recovery is required.
Cloud backup as a service will immediately and significantly improve your accountancy practice response time to any disaster or incident that affects data availability. With the “3-2-1 Rule”, you will have versions of your business-critical data stored in an off-site, cloud-based location, meaning that you can access and recover it quickly and easily.
Partnering with a specialist service provider that also offers Disaster Recovery as a Service will provide you with efficient and cost-efficient disaster recovery, with agreed Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and use of best of breed technology and validation testing to ensure guaranteed recovery of applications and data.
Leverage the Knowledge and Expertise of an Accountancy Sector Specialist
Choosing to work with a recognised, fully resourced security specialist is a hard-headed business decision, taken by accountancy practice to avoid data loss, minimise downtime and protect both their reputation and their financial well-being at a manageable cost.
Specialist suppliers to the accountant sector who understand the regulatory environment and the challenges practices encounter, and work in partnership with their clients to align their technology use with their business strategy, delivering robust and compliant solutions that improve productivity, enable flexible working and mitigate risk.
FTS, an Accountant sector specialist, has in-depth experience of managing data security and disaster recovery, strong knowledge of the compliance requirements that accountancy practices face, and have close relationships with accountancy technology vendors, such as Digita Professional Suite, Iris, Zero and Sage.