PC Continuity Means Business Continuity
In today’s fast-paced business world, the ability to maintain continuous PC operations is crucial for your business. With limited resources and manpower, you cannot afford to lose data or prolonged downtime. A crashed laptop can take 4 or more days to repair (or replace) and rebuild. The impact on your ability to serve your clients, manage marketing and sales, and invoice will be operationally and financially disruptive.
Backup Covers the Basics
Backup solutions are foundational to business continuity, particularly for small enterprises. A reliable backup service ensures your critical data is secure and recoverable. Having backups off-premise, or in the cloud, extends your protection to physical hazards that can damage local backup systems.
Backups, while essential, come with challenges. Before you restore, you need to repair or replace damaged equipment. This takes time. Restoring from the cloud is limited by bandwidth. This takes time. Repair and restore gets you your data back, but slowly. Meanwhile, you will struggle to run your business.
Unique IT Challenges
As a sole practitioner or other very small business, you face unique IT challenges. With limited devices, a single computer failure can bring your business activities to an abrupt and extended halt. Unlike larger businesses, you likely don’t have the budget to keep spare equipment on hand or to quickly purchase replacements. As a small business leader, you want, and need, to strike a balance between risk, protection, and budget.
A Solution Set for Smaller Businesses
Fortunately, you have service options that help minimize your risk for business disruptions due to PC problems.
PC Continuity
You can overcome the challenges and limitations of backup/recovery solutions without breaking the bank. PC Continuity solutions enable you to keep your business running while your PC is repaired or replaced and restored.
PC Continuity captures full images of your device multiple times per day. When needed, the image loads and runs on a virtual desktop in a cloud data center. You can access your system’s image from any device with a web browser or a thin client agent.
With PC Continuity, you can return to work quickly. For a small incremental fee above your backup/recovery service, your business keeps running.
Monitoring and Management
Ensuring your computers are current with respect to patches and updates helps ensure optimal performance and security. Monitoring for system performance can also flag hardware issues before they cause damage or fail. Remote monitoring and management services track the health of your computer and can alert your IT service team to issues and conditions before they become problems. The service allows for managing system and software updates and can provide remote access to your IT support team when needed.
Lifecycle Management
Larger companies use lifecycle management to manage their computer purchasing and upgrade cycles. For small businesses, lifecycle management focuses on extending the lifespan of your devices and understanding when it is best to upgrade or replace aging systems. Besides tracking age and warranty status, these services can include extended warranty and accidental damage coverage plans. These coverages provide repair or like-device replacement. Having extended warranty and accidental damage coverage reduces the risk of maintaining older systems. In the event of an expected failure or accident, you can avoid early replacement costs. Some lifecycle management services include certified electronics disposal, helping you avoid e-waste compliance issues and disposal fees.
Your Next Steps
Understanding the risks and impact of PC/Laptop problems, you should decide the value of the various levels of protections. While protection and continuity services come at a cost, a single incident with your PC or Laptop can cost you in days of lost productivity, damaged or lost data, and thousands of dollars.
To assess your risks, protections, and business continuity needs, please contact us or schedule a brief intro call with a Cloud Advisor. The assessment is free and without obligation.
About the Author
Bill is a Senior Cloud Advisor responsible for helping small and midsize organizations with cloud forward solutions that meet their business needs, priorities, and budgets. Bill works with executives, leaders, and team members to understand workflows, identify strategic goals and tactical requirements, and design solutions and implementation phases. Having helped over 200 organizations successfully adopt cloud solutions, his expertise and working style ensure a comfortable experience effective change management.
