How cloud backup saved my business

John ran a small design agency. His team of 5 worked on projects with big clients who required demanding deadlines. They constantly generated documents, PDFs and files, some of which represented hundreds of hours of work. Three months ago, John coordinated a switch to online cloud storage for all their document management but didn’t realise what a difference it would make until every business’ IT nightmare came along.

‘A computer virus hit our team’s computers. It was awful. We spent two days working out what had happened and eventually had to reformat most of our hardware.’ Fortunately, none of their files were lost. ‘If those files had been on one of the computers or even backed up by a local server, we wouldn’t have been able to access them that whole time. As it was, the team working on the time critical projects were moved to a temporary office with new equipment and picked up right where they left off.’

Cloud data storage is more than just being able to access what you want when you want it. Online data storage can save your bacon in many situations. How many of these have you had happen to you? Did you know that if you use cloud backup, you never have to worry about it happening to you again?

• You lose your laptop or it is stolen
  It’s so easy to do especially if you travel consistently. Can you really afford for that latest version of the design you worked on with the New York client to be lost? What about theft? Corporate theft is not unusual as thieves target places likely to turn up large numbers of technical goods. You can always buy a new computer but you can never get the time or knowledge back that was lost.

• Your laptop/server gets a virus
  While anti-virus software is going a long way to delivering clean and safe computers, the threat of a virus wiping out your documents is still a very real one. Storing documents off your computer keeps them out of harms way.

• File corruption
  Sometimes for seemingly no reason files corrupt. When a file is corrupted it won’t open and the information contained within it is lost forever. With version save through online data storage, recovering the original document is just a phone call away.

• Time Zone Conflicts
  If an employee urgently needs access to a file that is stored on another employees computer, it’s possible that person may not be available particularly if the employees live in different time zones. Online file sharing in cloud back up services eradicates accessibility issues by allowing access to instantly updated documents company-wide.

• Someone – or yourself – overwriting the original document
  It’s happened to the best of us. A team member didn’t realise they weren’t supposed to make changes or someone just makes a mistake. Unless a new version of the document is saved every single time – making folders complicated and unnecessarily large – there’s no way to go back to the original version and start again. Back up with online file storage means anyone can make whatever changes they want and you’ll always be able to return it to an original version.

What tricky situations has online document storage gotten you out of lately? We recommend you use our 8 tips for getting the most out of your online data storage. If you’re asking, ‘What is cloud storage?’, call us today for the answer!