The new year is well upon us, and with it comes an equally new IT budget. Judging by the advancements in computing technology, many 2017 business wish lists probably include powerful onsite servers, workstations, and the Internet of Things. But as tempting as these purchases may be, it’s important that you don’t dismiss an old yet essential IT resolution: disaster recovery.

Delta is paying big for the IT outage that occurred last month: millions of dollars in damages, 2300 cancelled flights, and significant reputational damage. Despite the harsh cut to the airline’s bottom line, Delta will probably still survive. But the real question is this: Can your business survive after long periods of downtime? A natural disaster, power outage, or successful hack can be the downfall of many small- to medium-sized businesses.

Just because your IT provider has a plethora of awards and certifications under its belt doesn't mean that you can blindly hand over your business’s future to them. Often times, there are some aspects in your business continuity plan that tend to be overlooked by your provider.

When most business owners think of Virtualization, they likely don’t think of Disaster Recovery. The truth is, though, that Virtualization is a multi-faceted IT solution that can provide an effective backup in case your business is hit by a disaster.

Disaster Recovery ain’t what it used to be. Long gone are the days where a DR solution cost over a hundred thousand dollars and predominantly relied on tape backups. With the onset of cloud computing, today’s DR landscape has dramatically changed.

Whether it’s to backup your servers, upgrade your hardware or move towards a full-blown cloud based system, virtualization has become a popular solution for many companies. While the term virtualization has increasingly become a cost-effective strategy for many businesses, is it the right one for you? Here are some advantages to deploying a virtual system to your company plus some factors you should consider before making the final decision.

Most business owners don’t normally think they will be a victim of a natural disaster...not until an unforeseen crisis happens and their company ends up suffering from thousands or millions of dollars in economic and operational losses -- all because of the lack of thoughtful disaster preparedness.

While it is highly likely that you have an insurance policy that will cover your small or medium-sized business in the event of a disaster, chances are you don’t have business interruption insurance. The majority of smaller companies tend to overlook interruption policies, believing (or at least hoping) that regular insurance will be enough to protect them.