Why backup is the hidden hero for our modern way of working

Imagine the scene. 

You and your team of animators have spent the best part of two years creating a sequel to a hugely popular movie. After many sleepless nights from rewrites and last-minute changes, you’re ready to present an early cut.  

Then one day someone accidentally hits the wrong button, deleting your hard work frame by frame right in front of your eyes. What’s worse, the backup system hasn’t functioned properly for the last month. 

Well, that nightmare was a reality for the team working on Toy Story 2 in 1998. Luckily, the film was saved when one animator had a recent backup on her home computer, as she had been working remotely looking after her new born child. 

These types of horror scenarios still happen from time to time for many businesses today when their servers go down. Whether that’s because they’ve been victim of a cyber attack or someone accidentally deletes the wrong file. Which is why, not only do a lot of businesses need a physical backup for what they’ve lost, but they also need backup support to help get it sorted. The backup’s backup, if you will. 

We recently partnered with Barracuda, a cloud-to-cloud SaaS provider. They’re here to help you better support your customers. All to provide an extra sense of reassurance that no matter what happens, company data will always be protected. 

Better support for a hybrid world 

With so many of us working both from home and the office, more and more businesses are relying on cloud software – such as Microsoft 365 – to carry out day-to-day activities. And that produces a lot of data. 

The thing is, per Microsoft T&Cs, they can’t guarantee that data will be backed up if something goes wrong. In fact, Microsoft strongly suggests users work with a third-party to back up all files and important data. 

This is where Barracuda comes in. Having supported businesses for several years, they can now look after all the data created each day. And provide a backup whenever it’s needed. 

We recently hosted Charlie Smith from Barracuda in our webinar and asked him what were the most important things businesses needed to be aware of when it comes to data backup. In summary, the top three were: 

1. Cloud is king: Having a cloud-based backup system is leaps and bounds ahead of traditional on-site systems. There’s no software or hardware to manage or update. So IT partners can easily make changes wherever businesses’ teams are, rather than the other way round.

2. More backup, more often: It might sound obvious, but the more a business’s data is backed up, the more up-to-date the systems are. So in the event of a crisis, everyone can rest assured that they’re recovering up-to-date information, rather than last week’s files.

3. Restore specific data: With so many Microsoft 365 applications, the type of data being created every single day can differ wildly between teams. Being able to restore specific SharePoint systems makes it easier to find what people are looking for.

You can watch the full recording here. If you have any questions or would like to arrange a chat with your Westcoast Cloud advisor, get in touch.