Many businesses that rely heavily on network data to conduct business operations, interact with customers, process payments or provide remote access for off-site employees believe they are protected from data loss or network failure because they have a “backup and recovery” system in place.

Unfortunately, this false sense of security can leave a company vulnerable to a lengthy and potentially crippling business interruption. So much so that many businesses each year experience significant loss of revenue, diminished customer confidence, and yes, even go out of business completely — despite having some type of backup system in place.

The “I have a backup system, so I’m covered” mentality ignores several critical factors.

First, recovering data from backups can take many hours and even days if associated with hardware failures. Backups can also become corrupted and may not be reliable when needed. Second, in addition to the critical nature of the data, if there is a failure of the application, database or e-mail server it can leave the business unable to access that data, place orders, bill customers and the like.

For this reason, companies that rely heavily on electronic records or transactions such as insurance agencies, healthcare providers, medical practices, legal, accounting and even industrial firms, any solution that does not restore the network to full functionality within minutes — no matter the cause or point of failure — is simply a nonstarter.

“In healthcare, the ability to access data is extremely important,” says Justin Huckaby, IT manager at CMA Healthcare, an independent, multi-specialty medical practice in South Carolina. “Physicians now rely on electronic medical records to make good healthcare decisions for their patients. In extreme cases, it can actually be a life or death situation because physicians make decisions based on the information they can access,” he adds.

Immediate access to data is just as important for the National Service Center, a depot repair shop and spare parts distributor for a variety of industrial barcode and label printers, digital signage, wireless networking and RFID systems.

“We have terabytes and terabytes of data on our servers. The entire company, as well as field employees and customers are logged into the system throughout the entire day,” says John Campbell, IT manager. “If our accounting systems were to die, our business would close.”