I know, I know, the technology world is rife with slang, jargon and acronyms.   In fact, we’re famous for being almost impossible for the layman to understand . I’ve been using words with no vowels for longer than I care to admit.  That said, some of these terms are important for a business owner to understand – if for no other reason than to make sure their business has what it needs.

So let’s get started!

1. Backup and recovery - the verb phrase “to back up” means that you make a copy of your data so that if you lose it you can replace it.  The noun “backup” is the copy you made and the act of replacing it is “recovery”.  You can back up your data on any sort of schedule – monthly, weekly, daily, hourly or even more frequently.  I usually recommend making a backup at least daily.  There are a lot of ways to back up your data – to a USB drive or other external hard drive, to a CD or DVD or to the cloud.  Services like Mozy and Carbonite are a business owner’s best friend.  Here are a couple other thoughts on backup and recovery:  First, make sure you are backing up everything you should be.  I had an outage about a year ago and realized I was backing up everything except my email.  Ouch!  Next, test your recovery.  If I had done that, I would have realized I was taking incomplete backups BEFORE I got bitten.
2. Redundancy - redundancy essentially means duplication.  A system is redundant if services are split in two or more pieces so that if one fails you have something to fall back on.  It is important to think about your technology and to determine where and when you need redundancy.  If you are a small business owner with only a single pc your redundancy plan might be to go to Office Depot and buy a new pc.  Then you could use the backup from number 1 to be back in business in a few hours.  If you are a larger business or are looking to push technology services to the cloud you may have deeper needs.  When you talk to service providers ask them about their redundancy and look for two things:  first is hardware redundancy which means that they have split your services over multiple machines so that if they lose one you are still good to go.  Also ask about location redundancy – what if oh, for example, Hurricane Irene slammed into their data center?  Do they have services in another, preferably far away, location that can keep your business up and running?
3. Archiving - to archive means to save off old data that you want to keep around but don’t need ready access to.  Archiving is closely related to back up and recovery but with a subtle twist.  When you are archive you may choose to copy your data to a medium that isn’t as easy or fast to recover from and that is separate from your current data.  An example of this would be where you back up your current data to the cloud for fast and simple recovery but you put your really old stuff on a DVD and store it offsite.  It is important to consider what needs to be archived – you may not want to pay to back up and store all that old data every night and you certainly won’t want to add time to recover it in the event something bad happens.
4. Disaster recovery - Wikipedia says “ is the process, policies and procedures related to preparing for recovery or continuation of technology infrastructure critical to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster”.  Your disaster recover plan will include your backup, recovery, redundancy and archiving plans.  It is the technology portion of your overall business continuity plan.

What does all this mean?

Recent cloud outages, earthquakes and hurricanes make all these issues relevant.  My advice is to make sure you have a business continuity plan that includes disaster recovery.  Get help putting together that plan if you need it.  In many cases you can contract with third party firms to make sure you have a plan and to monitor and maintain your systems for you.  If the bad thing happens the onus will be on them to get you up and running again – fast.

Patti Bunker is the president and founder of Clearly Simple Solutions, a technology advisory firm located in Atlanta, GA. She is an executive with over 25 years of technology experience in corporate America, as a consultant and in commercial software development. She understands both business and technology. Her broad background and varied experience enables her to see easily see the big picture and apply technology creatively to support business goals. Because it is about the business, not the technology. Now she applies that experience to help smaller businesses to benefit from technology. The result is Clearly Simple Solutions.

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