Hope for the best yet prepare for the worst.  This little addage holds water when it comes to backup planning.  In NE Ohio we have seen tornado devastated communities.  In flood zones, whole areas are put out of commission.  My question is how far do you think your off-site backup should be in relation to your office?  Perhaps 10 miles away from the office should work.  Now, how is the tape going to get there?  Most of our clients do not have a full-time IT person.  Some have an employee who takes the tape or drive off-site but lives within a 10 mile radius of the office.  Distance is not really a major issue if the disaster your comapny is looking to avert is a fire or theft or even an isolated natural disaster. 

Another important item to consider is the who and how of the off-site equation.  Who is the person responsible to take the backup off-site.  Is the data secure?  When we add the how is the data trasnsported off-site then some more issues are raised.  Now that the data is going off-site, how easy is it to access your data in the event that the tape or drive was lost or stolen?  For most companies the idea of having their data compromised is not acceptable.  

Can you afford to have your data stolen, destroyed by fire or a natural disaster?  One of the new solutions we offer is a off-site backup to a data center maintained by EMC, a leader in data storage.  Backups are encrypted, stored in a world class data center and accessible from anywhere there is internet access.  If your building was destroyed we coud recover your files to a new location.  We can even have the backups shippoed FedEx to arrive the next business day in the event that large amounts of data need restored.  This low cost, manageble and secure solution can alleviate the worry of keeping a copy of your data off-site.  Please call our office for more information at 330-551-2280.