When Hurricane Ike hit, it caused major flooding and wind damage across southeast Texas and the Gulf coast. The storm blew out windows in office buildings throughout Houston and surrounding areas, and hurricane force winds traveled as far as the east coast. In the wide path of the hurricane there was extensive building damage, power outages and evacuations.

Such natural disasters have opened many eyes to the necessity of disaster recovery planning. Not to be taken lightly, a proper disaster recovery plan can save a company from failure. According to an IDC report, over 90 percent of companies fail within one year of a significant data loss. Here are a few lessons from the event:

• When a major disaster hits, there is usually not time to protect all your critical assets so having a disaster plan in place beforehand is essential.
• Too many companies are still gambling that their data will be safe and are putting at risk their systems, their data and the survival of their company.
• Getting mission-critical data offsite and away from danger is one of the safest methods of protecting data from a major site disaster.
• In the event of major system damage, the ability to restore your files, data and other settings is very important (it's all about the restore!).
• Business continuity that allows you to resume operations and restore data to an alternate location should be considered.
• Be proactive and not reactive with your data protection strategies.

If you would like to arrange a complimentary trial of our IntelleBackup offsite backup service (no charges involved) to test as a business continuity/disaster recovery system, please call 248-735-1952 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it