Protecting Critical Data: 5 Benefits of Online (Cloud-Based) Backup

PROTECTING CRITICAL DATA: 5 BENEFITS OF ONLINE (CLOUD-BASED) BACKUP

A solid data backup plan can help companies survive catastrophic data loss. Both cloud-based and traditional in-house solutions can be used to back up data and we largely endorse a hybrid approach for corporate clients. However, in and by themselves, cloud-based solutions have notable advantages:

1. Cost

To implement an in-house data backup solution, companies must purchase all the required infrastructure, including the physical storage. By their nature, these solutions are created with broad tiers of storage space, which inevitably cause organizations to pay for more space than may be actually needed at a given point.

With a cloud-based data backup solution, there is no need to purchase infrastructure or pay for the IT staff time to maintain it.  Clients only pay for the storage space that is actually used.

2. Scalability

When growth occurs, companies need to significantly expand their data backup solution. It takes both time and money to scale an in-house solution as new infrastructure needs to be planned, purchased and installed.

Cloud-based data backup quickly and seamlessly scale with client’s needs. This eliminates the time and money overhead involved in scaling up existing infrastructure.  This becomes particularly appealing where cyclical fluctuations in data requirement may occur.

3. Reliability

Cloud-based data backup service providers sign service level agreements, or SLAs, with clients. These agreements clearly state the level of uptime, or amount of time that the data backup service is guaranteed to be available. Uptime levels range from 99.9% to 99.999%, where the level is typically referred to by the number of nines. So 99.9% is “3 nines” and 99.999% is “5 nines.”

Service providers have redundant systems and contingency plans in place to ensure their level of uptime. If the uptime falls below a certain agreed-upon threshold, you may be entitled to a refund or service credits as per the SLA.

4. Maintenance Free

Many traditional in-house backup solutions involve some kind of human intervention to ensure that your data is secure: updating the backup software, changing backup tapes, taking hard drives off site, preparing data packages for storage service (ex. Iron Mountain) to pick up … etc.

Cloud-based data backup is automated – taking on all the responsibility for reliably backing up and storing your data.  Your team is freed from the burden of reasonability and you have the peace of mind that your data is duplicated and secure.

5. Disaster Recovery

There is a high risk of permanently losing data where fire, floods, tornadoes, or other disaster occurs.  Thus, it has long been a business best practice to move copies of in-house backups to an off-site location.

No such consideration is necessary with cloud-based backup solutions. Providers must meet the contractual obligations within their SLA, typically replicating all backups to multiple data centres. This redundancy basically guarantees that your data is never lost as it will always exist somewhere else.


Each disaster recovery strategy should be as unique as the organization deploying it. But, there are common, best-practice, elements that are utilized and customized to suit today’s business environments. Please contact  your PC Corp Account Manager for more information or:

Email: info@pccorp.com, or

Call: (780) 428-3000 and simply mention ‘online backup’.

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