Server uptime and resiliency is a hot topic today for companies.

New technologies and regulations are forcing organizations to store enormous amounts of (largely unstructured) data… and it’s growing on a steep upward curve. At the same time, growing international markets and new “I want it now” customer service expectations are forcing them to operate on a 24/7 schedule.

And to make things worse… it’s all happening in a highly-competitive time, where IT budgets are being shrunk or locked down.

In today’s market, companies need to do more with less… while ensuring that there is little or no downtime… ever. If a critical server goes off-line for only a few moments, it’s enough to cause a major disruption for the business.

In order to visualize the productivity and revenue effects of unplanned server failures at an organization, you might want to consider trying Storagepipe’s Downtime Cost Calculator at: http://downtimecost.com.

Server resiliency is also a major challenge for smaller organizations that might not have the budget to support large, geographically-dispersed IT systems. In the event of a major incident, a small or mid-sized company might require 6 to 8 hours in order to bring their servers back online. And very small companies might experience several days of downtime.

This is no longer acceptable.

In a highly computerized society, it’s fair to say that a company’s ability to maintain reliable and consistent server uptime will grow to become a major factor in gaining and keeping customer trust. And if you ever break your promise of service consistency, your clients will be on Twitter and Facebook within minutes to tell their friends.

Thankfully, the cloud offers cost-effective solutions for smaller organizations.

Since SaaS companies live-and-die on the stability of their online services, they have a very strong incentive to invest in the security and availability of their IT infrastructure. If you’re dealing with a trustworthy provider, their systems are probably more resilient than anything you could afford to manage in-house.

And even if you want to host your own on-premises systems, there are a number of cloud-based high-availability solutions that can monitor and replicate your servers (in real-time) to another location, then serve as a temporary datacenter in an emergency. This is an ideal alternative since you don’t need to buy any hardware or build any expensive new datacenters. You just rent what you need on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Whether you decide to work with cloud-based software service or simply protect your servers in the cloud, SaaS offers budget-friendly opportunities for smaller organizations to fight the war on downtime without dramatically increasing their IT spend.

About The Author: Storagepipe Solutions offers a range of cost-effective tools that help eliminate or dramatically reduce unplanned server downtime: http://storagepipe.com

CONTACT:

Storagepipe Solutions Inc.

95 St. Clair Avenue West, Suite 1403
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4V 1N6
TEL 416-657-2200
FAX 416-961-0696
Toll Free 1-866-591-2200

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