Thousands of Cloud data storage* customers across the UK have no real idea where their data is stored, and often even who with. Are you amongst them? If so, beware; you could be taking an enormous risk by entrusting your company information to Cloud computing. If your supplier suddenly goes under, all your vital data could disappear quicker than you can say Cumulonimbus. Retrieving it all could take weeks or at least days, especially if you’re not 100 per cent clear on where and how your data is stored.
* Cloud storage is basically data storage located remotely, which you can access anywhere, anytime, using your laptop, mobile device or another PC.
‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ – don’t go there
In the event of a Cloud catastrophe, while you’re recovering your records, your company will almost certainly be affected in myriad ways. Amongst other things, you could lose customers, slip into the red, and your reputation for efficiency and always delivering on your promises could take a serious dent. Shaking your head and saying: “If only we’d kept all our data storage in-house…” won’t do you any good; the damage will have been done. But something that can give you peace of mind is allowing Intersys to put a contingency plan in place TODAY. Quickly and affordably, we can create a fallback position for you should the unthinkable happen, just as it did to customers of Cloud storage provider Nirvanix in September.
About the Nirvanix nightmare
Nirvanix — an American Cloud services provider — was hardly a big player in ‘Cloud world’. Its capacity for storage was small compared to the industry giants, such as Amazon S3, Google Storage, Microsoft Azure or IBM-SoftLayer. Nevertheless, before it folded, Nirvanix was still a fast-growing and thriving company, attracting more and more private and public clients as the rush to Cloud computing continued to sweep the world. (The Cloud industry is expected to grow to a staggering $150bn in 2014.)
For Nirvanix customers, being advised to move information (and we’re talking about petabytes of data here) off its Cloud “within the next 14 days” in September must have come as a shock – the kind of shock that is followed by, well, panic stations!
Don’t panic. Utilise Intersys’ services instead
Large enterprises will usually carry out in-depth due diligence, often taking many months before moving their data and services to a Cloud; however, such efforts are not feasible for companies in the SME sector (most Nirvanix customers were SMEs).
Granted, for all kinds of businesses, Cloud services have become the data storage method of choice, simply because Cloud computing offers so many benefits. Companies everywhere particularly love the invisibility that Cloud computing provides: the storage capacity is practically infinite yet there is absolutely no space taken up for the customers – at the office, at home, on company data centre servers. But should a Cloud supplier become invisible altogether, the clamour to embrace Cloud computing suddenly appears somewhat hasty, to say the least.
As already mentioned, one sure-fire way to avoid having to wait weeks to retrieve your data (in the event of a Cloud disaster) is to opt for Intersys backup and hosted solutions. We understand that your company information is business critical. It must be safe and secure at all times. Rest assured, all your data will be stored on Intersys’ own servers, under our control. If you need your data back in an emergency, we can have it transferred to portable media and with a courier in a matter of hours.