Written by: John Mason, GM, IBM Midmarket Business
During times of crisis and natural disasters such as super storms in the Northeast U.S., earthquakes in Japan or floods in India, many businesses might feel the impact, but small businesses in particular are extremely vulnerable.
Over the past few years, weather conditions have grown increasingly erratic and extreme. What had previously been known as disaster season is now year-round and constant, and small businesses are among the most unprepared for emergencies. Unfortunately, disasters can wipe out an ill-prepared small business in seconds, according to the Small Business Administration. Specifically, Hurricane Sandy caused tens of billions of dollars of property damage—damaging or destroying over 460,000 small businesses in New York and New Jersey alone.
For small and medium businesses (SMBs), any extended loss of productivity can result in reduced cash flow through late invoicing and fulfillment, and lost orders. However, for the health of the businesses, it’s critical that an SMB be able to recover quickly after a disaster of any type. With rapid recovery in mind, how can small business owners prepare for and mitigate damage caused by a natural disaster?
The answer lies in technologies such as cloud computing, which not only provide a competitive edge during normal business and weather conditions, but also improve SMBs’ abilities to recover from disasters and protect the very information their businesses depend on. This increased level of confidence in the cloud platform, combined with advanced capabilities that IBM has made significant investments in, is opening the door for SMBs to turn their attention to growing their businesses while delegating standard IT management to the cloud.
At IBM, we see SMBs relying more and more on managed service providers to extend these IT capabilities which include security, backup and recovery, to ensure that the provider an SMB chooses is also protected during a natural disaster.
A technology solution portfolio to address quicker recovery could also include private cloud, hybrid cloud and data replication services – all key components to prepare business to survive the next disaster, natural or otherwise. In addition, a managed service with a pay-as-you-go approach can help SMBs manage costs, since the capital investment in hardware and software is significantly lowered.
Managed service providers also can create regular situational scenarios to test how effectively a data recovery plan can be implemented. These drills provides assurance that, should disaster strike, operations will return to normal as quickly as possible. In addition, regular monitoring ensures that the disaster recovery plan continues to perform as required, as the business grows over time. Should operations change, the plan can and should change alongside them.
Disaster doesn’t only effect physical locations. More than 60 percent of executives polled in an AT&T survey were interested in managing mobiledevices within their business continuity plan. Incorporating mobile security and management is as important a step to ensuring the utmost security of corporate data as well as employees’ personal data. But when disaster strikes and communication between different business systems gets disconnected, maintaining a secure mobile network may become impossible.
Cloud management services ensure this mobile network continuity. By moving mobile management to the cloud, small businesses can keep employees and customers in the loop while data flow is restored. With today’s dependence on technology, business owners must also be prepared for disruption of their digital infrastructures. Critical data backed up to secure cloud servers allows SMBs to access information from any location, at any time – letting that critical post-disaster recovery begin right away, so the business can open back up to customers as quickly as possible.
Unexpected events that disrupt normal business activity are becoming the norm, and they do have a major impact on operations, staff and customers. In this new environment, business leaders around the world are learning to rely on new tools and technologies to help better prepare for these natural disasters.
Creating and maintaining a comprehensive plan to deal with such unexpected events is a vital part of effective management, and is a worthwhile investment to help small businesses survive when the next disaster hits. For more information on IBM’s MSP initiatives, please click here.
Follow John on Twitter @jcmason.