In order to survive, compete, and thrive in today’s tech savvy world—companies must take appropriate action to secure their place within a digital economy. As data volumes grow and become increasingly more complex—organizations are feeling increased pressure to enhance their data backup and recovery capabilities. 

Defending and maintaining data integrity has become an increased point of emphasis as organizations strive to maintain business operations during times of data breach and cyber attacks. The viability of long-term company growth relies upon meeting the needs of consumers while protecting their personal information to the highest extent. 

Successful transformation projects have the potential to increase revenue growth by as much as 23% if implemented properly (IDG 2018). The difficulty lies in creating a data backup and recovery approach for protecting massive data volumes. In the event of a natural disaster or data breach—you want to ensure your business has the capability of maintaining operational effectiveness when problems or issues arise.

It’s no secret that digital transformation has become a critical component of successfully managing business operations.The problem is many companies face a paradoxical dilemma when it comes to handling exploding data volumes.

As data continues to grow at nearly 50% per year—risk of attack also increases at an exponentially higher rate. As potential security breaches constantly loom—increased importance has been placed on automating critical backup processes. Companies must take a strategic approach to protect highly sensitive data such as intellectual property and personally identifiable information. Creating cost-effective solutions designed for addressing specific needs and security measures continues to be an ongoing concern for most organizations.

While it's important to ensure you are moving your DX initiatives forward, it's equally as important to create a sound data backup and recovery strategy to protect those assets in case of a loss. Without the processes and technology in place to recover data its likely your organization will suffer long operational downtimes and revenue losses when a disaster or breach occurs. 

Although many companies attempt to undergo complete digital transformations—a staggering number of them result in failure. A recent article by Forbes highlighted the fact that 70% of digital transformations are unsuccessful in one way or another. Evolving with technology is an inescapable aspect of business, but companies must be strategic when implementing company-wide changes. Here’s some of the common obstacles faced by organizations when performing digital transformations:

• Lack of automation: implementing automation strategy is key for optimizing time management and eliminating tedious manual processes.
  
  
• Staffing and resource limitations: many organizations lack the appropriate human capital necessary for undergoing digital transformations. Additionally, an absence of sufficiently experienced IT candidates further complicates this matter.

• Lack of analytics: companies should perform regular assessments of backup plans to measure their effectiveness. Backups may become fragmented, corrupted, or contain errors. Regular reports should be generated in order to assess strategic effectiveness with easily digestible data at hand.

In order for digital transformations to become integrated organically—companies must be proactive and consider all risk factors for optimizing their strategy. Creating a cost-effective data backup and recovery approach can enable your company to grow while protecting it from issues that may arise. 

Many companies attempt to undergo data protection strategies utilizing only their internal resources. Although this may appear to be more cost effective on the surface—lack of knowledge and experience can hinder the effectiveness of sound data protection and recovery strategies. This often results in fragmented deployments of technology increasing the technical debt down the road. 

Massively growing data volumes have resulted in increased expenses required for backing up and restoring data. Industry-wide spending rates for data protection and recovery software are growing at a rate nearly twice as fast as overall IT spending. As a result, many companies have been forced to increase IT budgetary expenditures in order to meet data requirements. To ensure your organization spends the budget right the first time, a sound strategy needs to be put in place the first time. 

Storing massive amounts of data on-site can be an overwhelming task for companies of all sizes. When on-premise equipment reaches maximum capacity—moving to cloud storage models can substantially reduce cost burdens. On the other hand, running out of storage or not having a secondary location can prove devastating in times of disaster and wreak havoc on internal operations.

Data backup and disaster recovery has become an absolute necessity in today’s day and age. Companies that fail to adopt appropriate backup strategies are putting their organizations at unnecessary risk. Keep in mind a disaster could be caused by a hacker, internal employee or a natural occurrence. No matter what the cause is, it's equally important to have a strategy in place to recover your digital assets.

According to one statistic from the US Department of Labor—93% of businesses who experience massive data disasters seize operations within one year. Some other notable statistics related to disaster recovery include:

• 75% of small businesses currently have no current disaster recovery plan in place (Nationwide 2019)
  
  
• The average cost of IT downtime results in losses of $5,600 per minute
  
  
• 80% of businesses who suffer major disasters go out of business within three years
  
  
• 40% of businesses who experience critical IT failure go out of business within one year

In the digital age, failure to create sound data protection and recovery strategies can lead to disastrous consequences. On the other hand, effective disaster recovery solutions can provide valuable protection during times of disaster. Here’s some key figures for businesses that have sufficient disaster recovery plans in place:

• 96% of businesses with disaster recovery plans end up fully recovering from disaster
  
  
• 96% of companies with data and disaster recovery plans successfully are able to survive ransomware attacks

Maintaining a proactive approach to data recovery will improve performance and protect companies during times of distress. The problem is creating an in-house team of capable IT professionals can be an expensive and arduous task for many companies.

The tech industry has been steadily growing for several years. As a result, the demand for IT related positions has increased to an even higher extent. The widening skills gap in qualified IT personnel has caused an increasing number of positions to go unfilled. In fact, by 2021 there may be as many as 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs without qualified candidates to fill them.

Challenges to Hiring a Team In-House

A massive shortage of IT professionals means that companies will continually struggle to fill roles with skillful candidates. The current job market simply cannot meet the demand for experienced IT professionals in the fields of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and other tech related matters. Taking the time to hire the right people for these positions can take several months. To further complicate matters, they may leave the position due to a competitive job market.

Along with having the right skillset—people must be able to function cohesively within the company. Many individuals struggle to find fulfillment in their positions if they’re constantly managing backups. These types of repetitive tasks can inevitably result in human error due to boredom and fatigue. Over time, employees may become stressed, burnt out, and even leave the company. 

Cost is another factor to consider when managing backups. Creating massive in-house IT teams can be expensive—not to mention the fact that it can eat up valuable human capital that could be allocated to other departments. Attracting and retaining qualified IT candidates is a challenge in and of itself, but the problems are compounded as new forms of technology arise.

New Digital Technology is Rapidly Expanding

The world of technology changes at a moment’s notice. Adoption of new technologies makes it even harder for organizations to keep pace with modern technology skills. One recent Gartner report cited that fewer than 20% of employees currently possess the skills necessary for adequately performing the duties of their job. 

Companies hoping to build and sustain IT teams must expend additional resources for training employees on a continual basis. If they fail to do so, they will likely struggle to keep pace with current technological advances. According to a recent Gartner report, there has been a 60% growth in technology skills required for non-IT roles over the last four years—so it applies to other departments as well.

For many companies, creating a viable in-house data protection and recovery strategy simply requires too many resources. Many organizations lack the significant time and financial investments required for creating an effective IT team. 

Today data has become the most valuable asset an individual or company may possess. As data breaches and cyber attacks reach an all-time high—having sufficient data protection strategies has become increasingly important. Losing data may translate to lower productivity, decreased revenues, and a loss of consumer trust.

Although data protection and recovery solutions are an integral part of modern-day successful digital transformations—building capable IT teams can be a challenge for many organizations. Implementing full-scale IT groups can waste valuable human capital that could be allocated to other departments. Deploying the use of third-party resources for data backup and recovery purposes is one way companies can leverage more strategic projects outside of IT. 

Check out our recent blog where one of our data backup experts talks about the Top 5 Things Your Data Backup Strategy Needs.

At TBConsulting, we address your IT needs by working alongside industry professionals. With a wide range of customized solutions and an automation platform built to execute backup and recovery data more quickly and safely—we help your company keep pace with new innovations while protecting data using comprehensive protection strategies. 

Partnering with TBConsulting will simplify IT needs and free up valuable company resources to focus on strategic business problems. We simplify complex tasks so your business can allocate time and resources to other departments. 

TBConsulting has the capabilities and technical know-how necessary for handling complex corporate infrastructures. We have specialized processes in place for acquiring and retaining top IT talent. We employ a network of highly qualified professionals capable of handling IT operations 24 hours a day. As your company grows, we’re able to scale your data volumes using our cloud-based platforms. 

As a managed service provider, we use cloud-based technology to help lower your backup and recovery costs. Our strategic partnerships with cloud and data protection vendors helps ensure we have the best and most cost effective solutions in place specifically for your organization. 

Still wondering if TBConsulting can help your business in a cost effective manner? Set up a 30 minute consult for more information on how we can help you with your Data backup and recovery strategy.