SMBs Need More Than Just Backup

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) need to keep their businesses up and running just as much as larger companies. Yet, they are challenged by several limitations when seeking out a solution that meets their mission-critical data recovery, application uptime, and data retention needs. These include:

• Limited funds
• Limited IT resources
• Limited/inadequate solution options designed for SMBs

With these challenges in mind, this paper identifies and explores the following:

Top 5 Evaluation Criteria for SMB Data Protection And Business Continuity Solutions

1. Recoverability: How quickly and completely does the solution deliver data recovery and server recovery? Does it meet both recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives?
2. Comprehensiveness: Does the solution offer a complete, integrated range of data protection, business continuity (data, application or server continuity), disaster recovery, and archiving services?
3. Ease of Use: Does the solution provide non-disruptive deployment, management (set it and forget it), and ongoing operation (simple recovery and failover/failback)?
4. SMB-specific Focus: Is the solution truly designed for SMBs? Or is it an unwieldy and expensive retrofit of a solution meant for large enterprises or an under-featured consumer solution being sold to SMBs? Does the solution offer business-class functionality in a form factor that meets the simplicity and ease of use requirements of SMBs? Does the vendor have a user base of small and medium businesses?
5. Affordability: Is the solution cost-effective to implement from day one and over the long term? Does it offer a pay-as-you-grow approach?