Look no further than the Vegas strip to see the changing value of data. “The Caesars dynasty in Las Vegas says the data they have on their customers is one of their most valuable assets, which is shocking considering the property on the Las Vegas strip,” said Lisa Person, director of CompTIA’s Managed Services Community.
Data has become so valuable that best-practices now recommend two types of disaster recovery and business continuity backup: local and cloud, so you don’t have a single point of failure. And as data grows, so do its sources. Mobile devices, cloud applications and services, virtualized environments and big data repositories are the new normal, making up an information ecosystem that businesses need to run.
“The value of data makes it even more critical for businesses to protect,” Person said.
The newest resource bundle from CompTIA takes a top to bottom look at protecting data through business continuity and disaster recovery plans. In addition to CompTIA research and industry trends, it includes tools to calculate dollars lost during downtime and information to help you build plans for customers and potential clients.
Tackle Disaster Recovery With These 5 Tools:
- Downtime Cost Calculator
- Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Overview
- QuickStart Guide to Business Continuity and Data Recovery
- IT Security Assessment Wizard
- 10-Week Guide to Data Recovery and Business Continuity
The disaster recovery and business continuity bundle includes reports assessing factors driving and inhibiting BC/DR adoption, plus perspectives from IT channel partners and a tool that walks you through how to build a disaster recovery plan.
“It lays it out very easily: Here’s what you need, here’s what you need to do, and this is how, as a solution provider, you can start selling business recovery as a solution,” said Person.
The bundle also includes a new tool from CompTIA’s Managed Services Community, a real-time Downtime Cost Calculator. “SMB customers don’t seem to always understand the cost of their systems being down, which is specifically why this tool was created. You fill in the information about the company and you can calculate the overhead cost per hour. Add in the data related to your recovery process, and you can calculate the cost for every hour you’re down,” Person said.
Crunch the numbers on employee productivity, the time it takes to initiate the recovery process and the recovery point objective to get a critical look at how much downtime actually costs. “You don’t want to be down for more than an hour,” Person said. “A lot of people don’t know this, but overhead cost per hour tends to be about half of what the wages are.”
The tool is available thanks to CompTIA’s Managed Services Community, with an assist from Datto Inc.
“Our community worked with an executive council member from Datto, Rob Rae, and he helped us create our own version of the tool that could be used by all of our members.”
As businesses become more reliant on data — and data becomes more valuable — disaster recovery and business continuity plans are becoming essential to business. According to research included in the bundle, 93 percent of business end users feel that their data is important, a number that’s continuing to grow.
“This is a great space for solution providers to offer both the services, the hardware and the software to create a comprehensive plan,” Person said.
Access the bundle here.
Learn About Disaster Recovery At ChannelCon
Premier members: Attend ChannelCon in Chicago this August and earn the Executive Certificate in Data Recovery and Business Continuity. The course is part of the channel training that takes places each year at our annual IT event. Read more about the certificate program, and join us for ChannelCon this August 3-5 at the downtown Hilton in Chicago.
Michelle Peterson is a communications specialist for CompTIA.
