For many reasons, businesses of all sizes delay putting into place a solid business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) plan. It costs both time and money. But the wrath of Superstorm Sandy has given IT leaders a reason to pause and reconsider whether their BC/DR plans are enough – or if they aren’t at all.
During Sandy, millions were left without power, cable and phones for days on end – many people lost their homes and businesses and are now trying to rebuild. However, Internet telephony has come a long way in the past 10 years, and businesses now have control over their communications in a disaster – to log on and change how your telephone and other communications are handled.
In fact, Internet telephony is available from larger companies like AT&T, Verizon (News - Alert), Comcast and Time Warner, as well as from smaller IP companies like RingCentral, which focuses on offering this kind of technology to the small business market, a recent Tech News Report article pointed out.
Because BC/DR is often an expensive endeavor, many businesses hope to skate by, without incident, and try to remember to back up all of their mission-critical data. But the onset of cloud-based storage has given businesses a more affordable and reliable option for backup service.
“The cloud can be used for backing up your data or as an alternative to storing it on hard drives. It can be for individuals or entire companies. As we increasingly use tablets, smartphones and computers, the cloud makes more sense,” the report said. “That way, if a device should be destroyed, stolen or lost, you are not out of business. You simply log on to your cloud account from any other device, and you have access to all your data.”
However, many people tend to associate the cloud only with reduced cost and high savings and fail to go beyond that. They fail to understand the real potential of cloud telephony and the opportunities that it presents, especially for small to medium business communications services.
Cloud telephony means no hardware to maintain, no software to upgrade and no maintenance charges, all of which translates into cost savings. Furthermore, there is a common system to support multiple locations and in case of a failure, disaster recovery solutions help the company to get back on track very quickly.
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Edited by Rachel Ramsey